


It's Just a Thing

by softrockstars



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Bets, Friends With Benefits, M/M, Multi, Red Herring - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-18
Updated: 2012-06-18
Packaged: 2017-11-08 01:34:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 25,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/437674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softrockstars/pseuds/softrockstars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set mostly during the 09/10 and 10/11 seasons, Ryan Whitney and Maxime Talbot make a bet about who can sleep with more number one NHL draft picks: shenanigans ensue. This is a story about friends with benefits and Ryan Whitney's journey of ~*self-discovery*~.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. part one: no standards; just winning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a soundtrack that can be downloaded [here](http://s0ckahtoa.livejournal.com/2816.html).
> 
> This story is the product of a six month game of fic chicken; here are the results. 
> 
> So many thanks to the lovely gonetoarcadia for looking this over - you are a very great human! ♥

Like most stupid things in Ryan Whitney’s life, it’s probably Maxime Fucking Talbot’s fault.

Like many stories, it starts with a bet.

\--

It’s not like Ryan and Talbot were _super close_ or whatever when they were both still playing in Pittsburgh, but Ryan’s with Anaheim now and Talbot likes to keep tabs on everyone he knows. So Talbot calls like every other fucking day, and he’s funny enough and he doesn’t get offended when he gets hung up on, so whatever: Ryan can pick up the phone for him and they can shoot the shit for a while.

He can’t remember exactly why or how it starts but, to Ryan’s best estimation, Talbot’s just talking like he always is, and Ryan’s only half paying attention. Talbot says something about the time he banged Marc-Andre Fleury and then suddenly goes all quiet, probably because he thinks it’s all sorts of awkward that he most definitely just accidentally outed himself as someone who occasionally bangs dudes. Ryan kind of thinks this is a total over-reaction, since most of Pittsburgh has probably slept with Fleury, including Ryan himself, and he tells Talbot as much.

“Oh,” Talbot says. There’s an awkward pause, before Talbot changes the subject and starts prattling on again, probably about something entirely different.

Ryan promptly forgets that this conversation ever even took place, until Talbot texts him three weeks later with **_DID SID._**

He considers this text for a long time, mostly _why the fuck did Talbot text me about this shit_ , before firing back a **_why the fuck do I care?_**

He doesn’t even need to check his caller ID when his phone rings almost immediately -

“The bet!” Talbot crows loudly on the other end. “I win!”

Ryan wonders how much time Talbot spends having conversations in his head and being delusional enough to believe that they’ve actually happened in real life. “What the fuck are you even talking about?” he can’t help asking and then regretting almost immediately. “What bet?”

“The bet where I fuck more number one NHL picks than you do: I win!” Talbot repeats impatiently, and Ryan fights the urge to hang up on him.

Instead - and he has no idea what possesses him to say it - he snipes, “Fuck you, peasant: I could school you in that shit. Recognize, son.”

“Uh huh,” Talbot says serenely.

Ryan sighs: “Stakes? Not money: that would be fucking gross.”

“Bragging rights,” Talbot says immediately, and Ryan belatedly realizes that not only has he been trapped, but also that Talbot’s probably been thinking about this all week. But it’s too late to back out now - “Plus you have to wear a Talbot shirt around the city for a week.”

“So you’re going to wear a fucking Whitney shirt around Pittsburgh if you lose?”

“No,” Talbot scoffs. “Because all I fucking do is win like a boss.”

They set some ground rules: whoever can sleep with more number one draft picks until they both get bored of this bet is declared the winner. Homewrecking is strongly discouraged, and everything must obviously be consensual, though the draftee doesn’t necessarily need to be told it’s a bet.

“I heard Ovechkin doesn’t sleep with dudes,” Ryan offers.

“Yeah, you heard right,” Talbot says cryptically. "Not that he has an issue with it or whatever. Just, you know. Doesn't."

“I don’t think I even want to know how you can confirm that,” Ryan says, and then pauses to think before continuing: “And doubles don’t count, Talbot. You can’t fuck Flower again and say you’re at three.”

Talbot makes a sort of vaguely offended sound: “Fuck _you_. So game on or what?”

“You’re going down, Max.”

“Not on you I’m not!” Talbot informs him blithely. “Besides: who’s currently winning? Here’s a hint - not you!”

\--

A week and a half into the stupid bet, coincidently known to most as the end of January, the Ducks end up in Tampa Bay for a few days, and because the NHL admittedly feels like a gigantic frat house sometimes, guys from both teams end up at the same club. Ryan Malone comes over to fist-bump Ryan, and guys from both teams end up taking over the same booth near the back of the room. Ryan works his strategy and ends up next to Steven Stamkos, who’s all smiles and friendliness and in desperate need of a haircut. He cheerfully tells Ryan about how he and his team are friendly with the club’s owner, so he doesn’t even mind that Steven’s actually more than a year away from the legal drinking age in Florida, as long as they’re all hush-hush about it so that the club doesn’t get closed down.

Ryan’s doing his best to be suave and subtle, and to not feel like an old creeper. Stamkos is super responsive to Ryan's questions and enthusiastically injecting his own commentary into it all, but Ryan’s not getting the _fuck yeah, let's go_ vibes he would if this was a sure green-lit situation, so he tries one last time:

“What're you up to later?” he throws out casually.

“Going home with my girl,” Steven says, inclining his head across the room, where a group of very attractive women, all looking so _Florida_ , are dancing. “We have this thing, where we go out and pretend we don't know each other? But then we go home together anyway, and it's awesome? Yeah. How about you?”

Oh. Huh. Strangely enough, Ryan’s not even too pressed about striking out on Stamkos: he seems like a nice enough kid, who is just oblivious enough to Ryan’s advances. “Oh, you know,” Ryan says vaguely, and waves his hand a little, and Steven nods cheerfully.

Ryan consoles himself by picking up and going home with one of the hot blondes in Stamkos' girlfriend's group, so hey: that's probably an even better win. It's a productive evening overall, especially since she turns out to be witty, clever and pre-med, as well as very vocal in bed.

As he does the stride of pride the next morning back to the hotel where the Ducks are staying, he decides to not tell Talbot that Stamkos is straight and let him find out for himself - sure, it might be kind of a dickbag move to withhold the information, but Talbot would probably do the same thing if he were in Ryan’s situation. Besides: it’s funnier this way.

\--

There’s a lull in the regular season schedule in February when the Olympics arrive. Ryan gets called in to represent Team USA, which is awesome. It doesn't matter that he's a replacement, because _Ryan gets to play in the motherfucking Olympics_ , and that’s pretty aces regardless of why.

It’s also here, at the Olympics, where Ryan ends up sleeping with Erik Johnson. It’s not like Ryan’s _not_ taking the Olympics seriously, because he _is_ ; it’s just that he’s got this secondary mission, too. So he kind of gets to know Erik while getting paired up with him for drills, and that night, Ryan decides that the best way to win this round is to play to Erik’s sense of competition and patriotism. He sketches out the guidelines of the bet to him, and explains that Erik should sleep with him because if he doesn’t, the Canadians have won, which is not _technically_ a lie.

Erik seems to think about this - "Does this have anything to do with how Maxime Talbot somehow has my number and keeps calling me?"

"This has _everything_ to do with that," Ryan says seriously.

"I don't really sleep with dudes though," Erik tells him, almost apologetically.

Ryan nods, but points out how if you look at it one way, though, it's kind of like taking one for Team America, and getting laid out of the deal, so _really_. Apparently _that's_ the selling point, because all of a sudden, Erik’s more than ready to go along with it and almost immediately takes Ryan back to his hotel room.

Afterward, sometime between orgasms and Ryan pulling his pants back on in an attempt to stumble back to his own room so he can actually get some shut-eye before their early morning skate tomorrow, Erik turns to look at him, sleepy and happily fucked out, and mumbles “USA! USA!”, which makes Ryan laugh and wonder why all his one night stands can’t be this ridiculous and accidentally fun - maybe it’s time to break out the patriotism pick-up lines more often: he files that one away for later.

And maybe there _is_ something to his patriot hypothesis, because they beat Canada in the round robin on Canadian ice - Jamie Langenbrunner starts a “USA! USA!” chant in the dressing room that gets picked up by Dustin Brown and Jonathan Quick and Ryan Kesler; everyone but Erik, who bursts into uncontrollable, hysterical laughter.

Then, in an act of patriotic solidarity, the whole team celebrates the win by getting fantastically drunk on American beer, and Ryan finds himself in the middle of a three-way with Patrick Kane _and_ Jack Johnson -

(“I’m not into dudes like _that_ ,” Patrick says while frantically pawing at Ryan’s shirt, Jack’s pants, anything he can get his hands on. He's already stripped himself down to his boxers. “For the record.”

Ryan just rolls his eyes, because like, yeah, he likes sex with women as much as the next mostly-straight guy, but even he would never make such outlandish claims while making out with Jack Johnson. He suspects that this might be why Jack is currently laughing into his kiss with Patrick.)

As Ryan, slicked up and protected, pushes carefully into Patrick after dutifully stretching him out, he thinks about how it would have been way more awkward to have a three-way with two guys who were both named ‘Johnson,’ because that would have been weird when he didn’t know what to call them, or the wrong one responded.

And Ryan might be drunker than he thought he was, because he’s probably just said this out loud, since Jack looks up from where he’s jerking off Patrick: “You can just call me JMFJ. Everyone else does. My mom. My brother. _Everyone_ ,” Jack says calmly to Ryan, like Ryan isn’t currently balls deep in Patrick. “It’s not even like me and Erik know each other all that well. No relation.”

“No homo,” Patrick adds, muffled as his face is pressed against the bed sheets. “Whitney, that all you got? Go harder, man.”

“Dude,” Ryan says, and shifts a bit so that he’s pushing in at a different angle, which makes Patrick babble something that sounds like a long, drawn out _fuck yeah_.

Jack just grins, winking like he and Ryan are in on some inside joke, and leans over Patrick to aggressively kiss Ryan instead.

("You don't get bonus points for sort of hooking up with Jack Mother Fucking Johnson," Talbot tells Ryan later. "Unless I get points for hooking up with DiPietro's wife, too."

"You fucking serious?" Ryan says in complete disbelief. "Why'd you do that for?"

"Had to. This is what happens when you end up in the middle of an open marriage: you get two DiPietros instead of one, so I took one for the team. And by the team, I mean me. And by me, I mean my penis," Talbot says loudly. "Suck it, Whitter: I win!"

Ryan can't even respond to that properly, too caught up with the first part of Talbot's sentence: "Wait, he's in an _open marriage_?"

"I know, right?" Talbot starts laughing. "Who would have thought it? It's so gold, it doesn't even matter that there wasn't enough time for Tavares, too. I'll get around to it next time: seduce him with my manly charms."

"Manly charms my ass, Max," Ryan says, but he starts cracking up, too.

"Are you a number one pick? No. So no fucking thanks," Talbot manages at the tail-end of his laughing fit.

Ryan doesn't think he's ever going to stop laughing ever again: " _DiPietro's open marriage_ ," he chokes out, setting both of them off all over again. This will probably never stop being funny.)

\--

Ryan gets traded to Edmonton two weeks after the Olympics. He gets approximately sixteen gazillion texts about it from family, friends, and teammates, most of them some variation of laughter or condolences. Sandwiched between all of them is another text from Talbot: **_Rick Nash. Boom._**

Ryan makes a face. **_Why?_**

His phone rings. He briefly entertains not answering it because Talbot can totally text him back like a normal person. He ends up answering anyway, to see what brilliant insights Talbot has to offer today:

“No standards; just winning!”

Then the line goes dead.

\--

Ryan plays out the rest of the season in Edmonton. Alberta in winter is different from California, if only because it’s suddenly so fucking cold all of the time, and the pretty girls here wear parkas and instead of short shorts. It’s not so bad: the guys in the dressing room are nice enough and make him feel welcome. On the ice, they’re not great and they lose more games than they win, though not for a lack of heart or trying.

By the end of the season, they are last in the league but management thanks them all on locker clean-out day and tells them that next season will be different; better. Ryan sure hopes so.

As it turns out, playing for a last place team means that, by default, Ryan really does give a shit about the draft this year even though he feels like a dirty old man when he reads up about the guys most likely to go first overall. He tells himself that it's in the interest of finding out who might be an Oiler come October, and not because he'd like to know who he might have to get to know better in order to stick it to Talbot. He then proceeds to actually watch the Plymouth Whalers and Windsor Spitfires in their Ontario Hockey League playoff series and feels like a total fucking creep while doing it. It kind of helps that the two guys who are vying to get picked first are definitely showcased in the series - Ryan starts to feel like his competitive streak to best Talbot is starting to teeter somewhat into the realm of the insane, but a bet’s a bet, and there’s no fucking way he’s going to lose to Talbot, so he forces himself to watch on as the two guys go battle for a puck in the corner, impressed by the skill level demonstrated by both Tyler Seguin _and_ Taylor Hall.

_It won’t matter who goes first,_ Ryan decides. _They’re hockey players: they’ll probably both be easy._

\--

Ryan has an osteotomy on his foot in early May and then spends the entire Memorial Cup tournament sitting on his ass in front of the couch and stoned out of his mind on pain medication. During this time, a remarkable amount of ice cream also gets consumed – he’s pretty sure the trainers would murder him without a second thought if they knew how much of it he was eating while sedentary on the couch, but fuck it: his foot _hurts_.

The recovery’s a slow process, but it happens: slowly but surely, he’s on his feet again, and as the days drag on by, with dedication and physio, it becomes easier to walk; to run; to skate. By the time the draft rolls around, his foot’s still causing him a considerable amount of discomfort, but the progress is making it easier for Ryan to be cautiously optimistic for the upcoming season.

Three days after the draft, Ryan calls Talbot because he’s bored, and he just _knows_ that Talbot's probably going to call him eventually: it's easier just to bite the bullet and contact him first. When Talbot picks up on the fourth ring, and audible moaning is heard in the background, Ryan tries to pretend that he doesn't know that Talbot's most definitely watching porn and jerking off on the other end of the line.

“Feeling better?” Talbot asks, and Ryan can practically hear him smirking. “Last time we talked, you called me during the Windsor and Brandon game, and you told me that you were going to do that guy. But then you kept talking about how you couldn’t cheat on the great spoon that you had? Something about marrying it because it spent a lot of time in your mouth bringing you ice cream.”

“Fuck you, I’m fine,” Ryan tells him dismissively. “That was the meds talking, dude.”

Talbot laughs, loudly and obnoxiously, but complies in changing the topic: “So Taylor Hall, eh? Disappointed?"

"No preference," Ryan tells him honestly. "I have a bet to win."

"Huh," Talbot kind of hums, probably some sort of agreement. "Hey, you ever end up hooking up with Tavares?"

"Nah," Ryan says. To be honest, he's kind of stalled since the Olympics: moving to Edmonton, a new city, meant new women, which kind of offered an awesome distraction from getting traded to a last place team in the midst of rebuild mode. "You?"

"Me neither," Talbot replies. There's a pause and the background moaning cuts off suddenly: Ryan takes this to mean that Talbot's muted his video, but probably hasn't stopped jerking it. "If you're so concerned with winning, which you're not doing by the way, why aren't you making a play for, like, Sid or something?"

Ryan thinks about it for a moment: Sid's a good kid and an even better hockey player, but Ryan's still not entirely convinced that he hasn't got the anatomy of, like, a Ken doll and doesn't _really_ want to find out - "It's the summer, man. There are other people here to hook up with here than Sidney Crosby. Hot Boston women, for example."

Talbot makes a huffing noise into the phone that sounds like a laugh: "Is that a forfeit?"

"Fuck no. Just taking the summer off."

"Strategizing how you're going to bang your new rookie?" Talbot asks, stuttering a little over his words. “You sure about this?”

“Like hell I’m going to be wearing your shirt around Edmonton," Ryan scoffs. "So yes.”

"Not if I get to him first," Talbot says. And then: "Hold on a sec," as he puts the phone down. Ryan can hear Talbot's muffled moaning in the background and takes that as his cue to hang up, because _what the fuck_ \- Ryan needs some new friends, and also a good game plan to get to Taylor Hall before Talbot does, because losing to Talbot would be completely synonymous with _failure_ , and that is so not a fucking option.

\--

Pre-season gears up again at the end of summer: there's a sense of anticipation in the air as players trickle into Edmonton for training camp and team bonding. He gets reacquainted with guys he met last season and meets new teammates, including Taylor Hall. Ryan doesn't really get a chance to get to know him better in those first few pre-season weeks: for the most part, the kid's busy either getting swarmed by media or bounding after the other wonder-rookies Magnus Paajarvi and Jordan Eberle.

Ryan might have to lie kind of low on this one: the local radio stations are doing call-in shows where they talk about sightings of the kid, which is kind of ridiculous because it’s basically one step away from stalking. Ryan’s going to play his cards right and decides that he’ll let the media circus sort of die down a little first before making his move: that’s probably for the best, anyway.

As a result, Ryan doesn't actually even get a chance to talk to Taylor properly until the night of the home opener, when the entire dressing room is vibrating with anticipatory energy. He wanders up to where Taylor's sitting half-dressed in his hockey pads and nudges him with his stick: “Hey kid, nervous?”

Taylor doesn’t look up from staring at his skates: so much for showing proper deference to his elders. “I don’t really get nervous,” he says distractedly.

Ryan just laughs. “Good,” he says, nudging him again. “Then get out there and show us what you’ve got.”

That gets Taylor looking up and grinning.

Taylor doesn’t score a highlight reel goal, but he does look significantly less nervous by the time the third period rolls around - he even kind of looks like he belongs out there. And afterward, in the dressing room when everyone else is heaping praises on Eberle for his ridiculous toe-drag and beautiful goal, Ryan catches Taylor’s eye from across the room as Taylor positively beams at him.

They all go out to celebrate: Ryan drinks enough that he’s pleasantly buzzed but still mostly functional. He watches as Taylor fails to pick up, and decides to make his move then - sidles up beside him and puts a hand on Taylor’s lower back, subtle enough that it could just be a moment of friendliness. Taylor turns to smile at him.

"Not so bad tonight, kid," Ryan tells him.

Taylor’s grin widens and tips the neck of his bottle toward Ryan: "Thanks. You were pretty good, too."

Ryan takes this as a cue to throw caution to the wind and segue in, hoping that he hasn't misread the situation: “You wanna get laid?” he asks casually so that it could possibly be misconstrued as a general question.

“Yeah,” Taylor tells him immediately, finishing the rest of his drink, and then looking at Ryan so intently that Ryan is almost taken aback at how little convincing that took - this is even easier than Ryan thought it was going to be. Ryan figured it would take more than that: usually it takes a bit of a sell. But hey: he’s not going to question it.

They end up back at Ryan’s and he’s barely got the front door shut, when Taylor’s hands are basically everywhere as he stretches up to make up for the height differential between the two of them. They kiss messily against the inside of Ryan’s door, one of Ryan’s hands braced against the doorknob, the other one tangled into Taylor’s hair: this would probably be awkward if it wasn’t actually kind of awesome. It takes everything in Ryan to push off the doorframe and steer the two of them toward the couch, a feat considering they don’t break the kiss once as they stumble over and land in a tangled heap on the three-seater with Ryan underneath, somehow narrowly escaping getting Taylor’s errant knee in his side which would have been sure to wind him.

Taylor makes a noise that sounds like a cross between a sigh and a laugh, his mouth still pressed to Ryan’s as he attempts to pull Ryan up against him. Ryan responds by biting down gently on Taylor’s lower lip. Taylor makes another sound, and this time it goes straight to Ryan’s dick, which leads to Taylor breaking off the kiss, and with cheeks flushed pink, folding himself onto the floor between Ryan’s legs, his hands hovering over the zipper.

"Uh, you're going to keep this on the down-low, right?" Taylor asks, and suddenly he seems nervous and hesitant, completely missing the bravado from only moments before.

Ryan decides that this is probably not the time for sarcasm or chirping and bites back any snarky comment he could possibly formulate in response. "For sure," he says. "Absolutely. We both will."

“Okay,” Taylor says, watching Ryan carefully. And then: "So, can I...?"

“You probably can,” Ryan smirks. “But the question is: _may you_?”

Taylor just kind of stares blankly at him, until Ryan rolls his eyes: “That’s a yes, Hallsy.”

“Oh, okay,” Taylor shrugs and before Ryan knows it, Taylor's pulled out a condom from his back pocket, unzipped Ryan and rolled it on to him.

"Wait,” Ryan pauses, leaning forward. “What?"

Taylor smiles sweetly, tossing the empty foil wrapper at Ryan’s face. "Because I don't know where the hell you've been,” he explains. “Pittsburgh and Anaheim, I guess. Boston."

Ryan considers protesting, but upon further consideration, supposes that the kid might have a point - Christ, how are they teaching kids in the OHL these days? - and concedes: "Fine, whatever. What about you?"

“ _I_ already got checked,” Taylor informs him, giving Ryan’s dick a few lazy strokes. “And I’m clean. So.”

Any great comeback Ryan may have been thinking about making - some half-formed chirp about Windsor and an inaccurately skewed statistic about the city’s STI rate, probably - gets lost, when Taylor gets his mouth around Ryan and works his jaw to let Ryan slide halfway out and dictate the rhythm.

Everything’s sort of unfocussed after that, and all Ryan really remembers is the blissed out aftermath, kind of drunk, happy and sated; he vaguely recalls Taylor tugging off the condom, and getting rid of it, before coming back and unceremoniously pulling Ryan’s pants back up and maneuvering Ryan until he’s lying properly on the couch: “Wow,” Taylor tells him, standing above him and sounding kind of amazed. “You really liked that.”

Ryan thinks about some sort of come-back, but that _was_ kind of a great blowjob, so he settles for a half-shrug instead and a lazy smile.

“Cool,” Taylor says easily. “So uh. I’ll see you around, yeah?”

He kind of pats Ryan on the shoulder and awkwardly-half waves at Ryan before letting himself out.

It’s only as Ryan’s almost drifted off to sleep right there on the couch that it occurs to him that there was no reciprocation on his part - fuckin’ _oops_.

\--

Ryan goes and gets checked the next day. To his utter relief, but lack of surprise, the results come back clean, and he casually mentions this to Taylor next time he gets him cornered before practice. He also casually drops that there might be something he owed Taylor the next time he's free; Taylor just grins: "Beauty," he says.

Later that night, some of the guys go out drinking again: they go out of their way to make it not look like they’re leaving together, but they end up at Ryan's anyway, and Taylor blows him _again_ , this time without the condom.

And then Taylor _swallows_ , which is totally relevant to Ryan's interests; Taylor smirks and it's all Ryan can do to haul him up and kiss him. Taylor shies away, like Ryan should be bothered by the fact that his dick was just in Taylor's mouth.

“Hey,” Ryan murmurs, ducking to catch his eye, because he’d like to think that, for the most part, he’s nothing like the guys Taylor’s probably used to, young and still squeamish. “It’s fine, okay?”

And it seems like Taylor’s probably okay with this also, because he’s nodding and then craning his head up to kiss Ryan, sloppy and messy and enthusiastic, and Ryan can feel Taylor pressed against him, hard in his jeans. He considers leaving it until Taylor mans up and actually says what he wants, but that’d put Ryan at oh-and-two, and that’s kind of a jackass stat. So without skipping another beat, Ryan leans forward in his seat on the couch to unzip Taylor’s jeans and shove a hand down Taylor’s boxer-briefs to jerk him off with short, hard strokes, pulling away long enough to tell Taylor to pull his pants lower if he doesn’t actually want to come in them.

“I swear to god, Hallsy,” Ryan warns without breaking rhythm as Taylor squirms, desperately trying to pull down his pants. “Jizz on the couch and I will fucking end you.”

\--

Over the next few weeks, Ryan finds himself hooking up with Taylor on a semi-regular basis, usually when the young guys all go out drinking, and maybe Ryan isn’t one of the younger guys anymore, but he _is_ unattached which is aces. And while he doesn't have all that much trouble picking up, he’s come to realize that Taylor pretty much has no game, which is ridiculously funny when they catch him striking out again and again since he’s young and likely going to be a star one day. But for someone who’s so good on the ice, he’s pretty terrible at trying to pick up girls, and he doesn't go for dudes at bars as far as Ryan can tell. Plus, while the blow jobs and hand jobs are great, Ryan still hasn’t broached the bet portion of hanging out with Taylor yet, so hey: if Ryan’s a man on a mission, he might as well throw the kid a bone. Literally.

“You bang him yet?” Talbot demands, the next time he calls.

“Close,” Ryan says. “Working on it.”

“Nice, Whit. What is he, like, nineteen?”

Ryan groans. “Almost. Next week.”

“You’re a bad person,” Talbot laughs. “Congratulations!”

“Yeah, well, I came to terms with that a long time ago,” Ryan tells him. “Also, you slept with Rick Nash.”

“Yeah, I did, didn’t I?” Talbot says cheerfully. “Good talk, Whit.”

\--

As the season slowly unfolds, Ryan learns that all three rookies are actually as good as advertised: Ebs’ got _skills_ , Maggie’s got _moves_ , and Taylor storms around the ice like a wild animal in a room full of fragile things. They seem to spend a lot of time together: in particular, Ebs and Taylor seem joined at the hip – if it weren’t for the fact that Ryan’s heard Ebs mention his girlfriend a few times in passing, and that Taylor sometimes goes home with Ryan to fool around, Ryan would wonder if there was something going on between the two kids.

(“Nah,” Taylor tells him one time while pulling his clothes back on and digging around in his pocket for his phone to call a cab. “Ebs and his girl have a good thing going. Plus I don’t think he’d be into it, you know?”)

Ryan’s bet with Talbot provides a good distraction to the mediocre record the Oilers have going so far this season, but the frenzy of trying to fuck his way through the drafts has kind of died out since the bet's inception back in January.

Then, in November, the Oilers go on a road trip through parts of New York state: they don’t make it to Long Island, but the Islanders are at home and Ryan manages to hook up with John Tavares during one of their days off. He doesn’t end of scoring with DiPietro, who apparently has a sore groin (again), which puts Ryan at one for two, but that isn’t so bad since it means that he’s pulled even with Talbot.

Then Talbot calls a few days later to announce that he’s banged Joe Thornton, and how the _fuck_ did he even manage that?

(“Wanna know why they call him ‘Jumbo Joe’?” Talbot says smugly. “I can tell you.”

Ryan decides that there are some things he’s probably better off _not_ knowing: “No, not even a little bit, man.”)

Their next game is an afternoon match-up against the Rangers at Madison Square Garden, and all morning leading up to it, Ebs and Maggie keep shoving Taylor and pulling him into headlocks because he turns nineteen today. Apparently this means that the three of them poke at each other all through breakfast, like the small children they are.

“No,” Maggie says almost indignantly when Theo Peckham articulates Ryan’s almost exact thoughts out loud – though like Theo can talk: he and Jason Strudwick just spent the entire meal pulling faces at Sam Gagner until milk shot out of his nose from laughing. “It means that we’re gonna win it for the birthday boy.”

Ebs beams and reaches over to muss up Taylor’s hair, which quickly disintegrates into another playful shoving match. Ryan just rolls his eyes and turns back to his eggs and toast.

They don’t win the game. In fact, they get routed so badly by the Rangers in a massive clusterfuck full of defensive breakdowns and sucker punches that it’s an absolute relief when they have to board the plane back to Edmonton immediately after the game. The entire flight back is a miserable one: everybody on board is wracked with shame at being _that_ embarrassingly outplayed. In a moment of tentative consideration as to how he might console himself from the stupidity of the entire afternoon, Ryan weighs the pros and cons of propositioning Taylor’s now nineteen year old self into joining the mile-high club and being done with this leg of this bet once and for all so that he can at least feel like he’s accomplished _something_ today, even if it would be wrapped up in at least two and a half clichés.

Then he looks over to where Taylor’s sitting, quiet and glum, and so unlike the ridiculousness that all of the kids were living out just hours ago, that Ryan decides it’s probably best to leave it for now. So he closes his eyes and hopes to be asleep until the plane touches down again in Leduc.

\--

Of course, the next day brings a new sense of optimism and hope, so the evening inevitably ends at the bar again; a belated birthday celebration of sorts for Taylor. They haven’t got practice until later the next day, so the young guys end up taking turns at buying rounds of shooters. Ryan catches Tom Gilbert’s eye from across the table, both of them with their college days far behind them and nursing beers instead. They exchange a ‘what can you do?’ half-shrug over Maggie’s tilted head as he pounds back a double shot of whiskey.

At the table over, a group of girls keep looking over at their booth while whispering and giggling – Ryan really thinks that this might have less to do with getting recognized, and much more to do with a table of half-drunk eighteen year old, probably heterosexual, girls who likely possess heteronormative tendencies. ( _Thank you, three quarters of a sociology degree_ , Ryan thinks, taking another long swallow of his beer.)

The kids don’t seem to have any qualms with this though, and end up buying a round of tequila shots for the girls. Gags sends Taylor over to talk to them, probably because he’s the most hilarious option, but also because he’s currently the drunkest of them all, and the most likely to agree to make his way over and chat up the girls -

“Go get birthday laid, Hallsy,” Gags tells him, pounding him hard on the back a couple times in encouragement. “Make us proud.”

It turns out Gags’ not wrong, either, because Taylor _does_ end up wandering over, stumbling only a little on the way.

They give him a few minutes with the girls, before Ryan definitely overhears him trying to pick up the tiny brunette perched on the outside of the table, shamelessly resorting to the _But it’s my birthday!_ line.

She sort of side-eyes him, as her friends at the table giggle. She hesitates for a moment, stirring her drink a little: “Oh, yeah? Prove it.”

Ryan watches half-interestedly as Taylor fumbles for his wallet and pulls out his driver’s license, presenting it to her with a flourish. She takes it from him to inspect closely, and then looks between the ID and Taylor’s face a few times.

And then she gasps: “Wait, you’re _Taylor Hall_?”

“Uh,” he pauses, before flashing his brightest, most hopeful grin. “Yeah?”

“Oh,” she says, and immediately slides out of her chair, grabbing her purse and coat, handing the driver’s license back to him. “Okay, let’s go. Happy birthday, by the way.”

As Taylor follows the girl out of the bar, pausing only to gives their table a double thumbs up, Ebs, Gags and Maggie drunkenly high-five each other and order another round.

Ryan gawks a little, surprised: “Did that just happen?” he asks the table at large.

Gibby tilts back the rest of his beer. “Yep.”

“That shit’s just downright _depressing_ ,” Ryan points out.

“Yep,” Gibby agrees.

\--

It’s more than a week later before they’re back at the bar, this time to celebrate a hard-fought win against the Avs. They all drink a little too much in celebration: everyone else is too busy reveling in festivities to notice when Ryan leans over to talk into Taylor’s ear so that he’s heard over the loud music and thumping bass. The line that Ryan throws out is probably awful, but Taylor doesn’t seem to care because he goes with it anyway; bro-hugs Ebs and trails out of the place after Ryan, getting into the cab and going home with him.

It’s different this time and they both know it, because when they get back to Ryan’s one-bedroom, they bypass the couch where they usually end up, and make it into the aforementioned bedroom instead. They leave a trail of clothing from the front door all the way down the hallway, and both of them are almost naked by the time Ryan gets them to the bed, stumbling onto it with Taylor underneath him. He slides a hand down Taylor’s side, pausing to rest against the side of his hip.

“Can I?” Ryan asks, suddenly slightly nervous; hesitant.

Taylor just smirks up at him, almost expectant. “I don’t know. Can you?”

That kind of throws Ryan off for a moment, and he just kind of stares at Taylor in disbelief before huffing out a laugh - “Dude, you didn’t even get the joke right,” he informs him, but reaches over to pull open the drawer on the bedside table anyway to grab a bottle of lube and a condom.

He pauses, considering Taylor: “So we’re doing this,” Ryan says, flipping open the cap of the lube bottle.

“Yeah,” Taylor says, reaching up to pull Ryan down for another kiss, wet and hot. And fuck: the things the kid can do with his mouth - Ryan silently thanks all the higher powers for Taylor's total lack of game.


	2. interlude one

Taylor's just drunk enough to be feeling good about the entire world - feeling fucking awesome, in fact, slipping his hands under Ryan's shirt as Ryan paws at his ass. He's never had a thing for old people, dudes especially because he can at least understand a hot MILF, but something about Ryan is totally doing it for him. Maybe it's the chirping, or the bro thing, or that they can both get off and not be weird about it the next day or have to worry about clingy girls trying to call him, or mouthy dudes outing him to TSN. Plus, they spend most of their time hanging out anyway, so Taylor doesn't even have to worry about his game, because apparently Ryan's pretty easy too.

Still, with Ryan's hand on his ass, he's putting on a bit of bravado, because while he's always cool with friendly blowjobs, he hasn't done anything like this since that time with Shuggy in Windsor. There's something in Ryan's usual smirk that promises it'll be good, so Taylor can roll with that.

He strips on the way to the bedroom, because it's always easier than trying to coordinate two people, especially when they've both been drinking. Explaining this to Ryan, however, seems to put a momentary pause in his plans.

"You sure this is okay?" Ryan asks, frowning, "'cause if you're drunk--"

"I'm not that drunk," he says, surprised again by Ryan's hilarious chivalry in the middle of everything else, falling back onto the bed. "Unless you don't want a piece of this." He grins as Ryan rolls his eyes, muttering to himself, and before Ryan can change his mind he spreads his legs and arches his back, going for slutty because personally, he thinks slutty is always awesome. Judging from the look on Ryan's face, he agrees.

And then Ryan's inside him, and Taylor tries to roll with it, but it's been a while - a pretty long while - since he's done this, and when the burn threatens to tip over into pain, because they still have to fucking skate tomorrow, he flings a hand back, pushes back against Ryan's hip. "Dude, just - give me a second," he mumbles, feeling almost guilty for putting on the brakes, because he wants to be cool about this. Ryan just laughs against the back of his neck, rubbing calming circles into the Taylor's side.

"Dude, I'm pretty sure I'm not that big," he drawls, and Taylor doesn't have to be looking at him to see the smug smirk, because Ryan's a fucking jerk sometimes.

"Yeah, it's just - need to get used to it." Ryan goes still behind him, and Taylor pulls the pillow closer to hide his burning face even though he knows there's nothing to be ashamed of; he gets laid just fine, but Edmonton bar stars aren't exactly into ass play, and when there's tits to play with, he's never gonna complain.

"Jesus christ, kid, tell me you've--"

Taylor can't help cracking up, burying his face even farther into the pillow. Ryan's sounding seriously freaked out, and Taylor's going to reassure him any moment now, totally. As soon as he can speak, because fucking _seriously_. "Sorry, Whit," he chokes out eventually. "You don't get my ass cherry." Then he shifts, because - huh, apparently that did the trick.

"Oh fuck you, Hallsy," Ryan mutters, and he's somehow grumpier than usual even though he's most of the way to balls-deep in Taylor, which is kind of insulting - so he pushes back against Ryan, and the next smartass comment dies in his throat - Taylor would fist pump but Ryan tilts his hips and he's clenching his hands in the sheets instead. He bites his lip to keep quiet, because fuck if he's giving Ryan any more ammunition. He's pretty sure he's going to be sore as anything tomorrow, but as Ryan closes a hand around Taylor's dick, jerking him roughly, he's pretty sure it'll be worth it.


	3. part two: an offer you can't spell

Everything seems to be getting better and better all the time: the Oilers go on a Northeast road trip and take all three games against Ottawa, Montreal and Toronto. The team ends up having a pretty sloppy hotel party while in Montreal - Ryan figures that the only thing missing in his life before today was Ladislav Smid's karaoke version of 'Alberta Bound': now Ryan thinks he will never want for anything else in his life ever again. Then he wakes up in a bed next to a beautiful girl who barely speaks any English, and Ryan has few doubts that La Belle Province might actually be a magical place.

And the other thing that's been going on in his life right now: even though there's no need to hook up with Taylor any more in theory, Ryan finds himself having done so a few times in recent weeks. He'd feel weird about it, but it's just that it's so easy with Taylor. Actually, it's pretty convenient to have someone that enthusiastic, willing, and surprisingly good with his mouth, in Ryan's back pocket. Plus it's not like they hook up when they _haven't_ been drinking - that probably makes it okay. It's not like anyone spends the night. It's all for a bet, anyway. And sometimes, the best option is the most easy and convenient option, and Taylor is often both easy _and_ convenient.

The team's success follows them home with a win against the Blues - the game ends up going into overtime, and the arena erupts to almost deafening decibels of noise when Taylor scores the game winning goal to give them the extra point.

The team goes out that night; of course they go out, and get completely hammered in celebration - even Shawn Horcoff is happily pounding them back, so somewhere in the back of Ryan's increasingly impaired brain, he briefly wonders if he should be concerned about the kids and alcohol poisoning.

Then he looks over at their booth and notices Ebs leaning drunkenly into Taylor's side, who's grinning as Gags is gesticulating widely and yelling into Andrew Cogliano’s face: "You know what's fucking great? Hockey!" Over at the next table, Maggie is chatting up a tall blonde girl who looks weirdly like a teenaged Khabibulin, so fuck it: if that's what these fools are into, they can handle themselves. Ryan takes this as his cue to order another Crown and Coke.

He's not quite sure how much time passes, but he knows that it's about two and a half drinks later, when a solid mass comes crashing into him and almost knocks him over - Ryan's ready to spin around to give the peasant a piece of his rather intoxicated mind, but when he does turn to look, it's just Taylor and his idiotic grin.

"Hey Ryan," he says, swaying a little and leaning into Ryan's personal space. Taylor leans in even further and lowers his voice: "Gonna grab another drink. Can I get you anything?"

Ryan glances between the half-empty glass, Taylor beaming face, and back again. "Are you sure you need another, kid?" And then he pauses: "Wait, is this some sort of come-on?"

"Is it working?" Taylor asks, sounding surprisingly hopeful.

"Not even a little, man," Ryan tells him, swirling his drink.

"Oh. No, it isn't then," Taylor says, blinking. He pauses, before brightening again. "Hey: wanna do it anyway?"

Ryan thinks about this as he drains the rest of his glass, making a bit of a face at the watered down Coke at the bottom of it - there could definitely be worse ways to end the evening. "Fine," Ryan finally says. "But only if you stop talking. Seriously."

"Okay," Taylor agrees cheerfully, and bounds over to the bar to settle: Ryan watches his retreating back and wonders, not for the first time, about his own questionable life choices.

\--

Ryan's not going to complain, even though he nearly trips over his own feet when Taylor shoves him back on to the bed, because then Taylor's there, kissing his way down Ryan's chest, open-mouthed and messy. He's still trying to process it, when Taylor bites Ryan's nipple hard, and Ryan shoves him away, because - "Fucking _ow_ , Hallsy, what the fuck?" Taylor's pouting, but Ryan's nipple is still throbbing and he's in no mood for this garbage. "I know you've got the brain function of a zombie right now, but that doesn't mean you have to try and eat me."

It takes a few moments for that to get through Taylor's head; he makes a face. "What are you gonna do about it?"

That's a challenge Ryan can't pass up, and the hilarious look on Taylor's face when Ryan tackles him down is just a bonus. It takes both of them a few tries to get Taylor's pants down - the shirt they abandon as a lost cause - and he'd probably feel worse about this if Taylor wasn't rolling over easily, reaching for the lube and tossing it blindly over his back.

Two fingers later, Ryan is feeling marginally more sober, and there's a nagging tickle in his brain that he's pretty sure is his conscience. "Hallsy," he says, going for casual, "We're really drunk. You sure this is cool?"

"C'mon Whit," Taylor whines, arching to look over his shoulder and the curve of his back visible under his shucked up shirt makes Ryan lose his train of thought for a second. "Don't be such a non."

Ryan considers saying more, but then Taylor grinds back on his fingers, clenching purposefully, and he figures the kid's old enough to make his own decisions.

They've done this enough that he doesn't have to be _too_ careful – as Ryan slicks himself up, Taylor's impatient fidgeting relaxes into a boneless sprawl, and even though they're both trashed, they find an easy rhythm through muscle memory, if nothing else. When Ryan shifts to take the pressure off the bruise on his thigh, Taylor jerks under him, and his knuckles go white in the sheets. Because Ryan's not an idiot, he accommodates the shift and pushes into him again, and this time he's pretty sure if Taylor's face wasn't pressed into a pillow, he'd probably wake the entire floor - to hell with that, he wants to hear it, and Taylor's voice cracks when Ryan tugs him up by his hair. It's not exactly comfortable, but watching Taylor fall apart under him is totally worth it. He thinks about speeding this up by jerking Taylor off now, but he can't quite get a good angle, so that will have to wait.

So it's a surprise when Taylor goes still under him, hand flailing back to ease Ryan's thrusts. For a moment he's worried that he's hurt the kid, but then Taylor slumps back down against the bed and Ryan realizes - holy _fuck_. That's ridiculously hot, and the smug feeling in his chest is totally enough to get him off embarrassingly fast, face pressed against Taylor's shoulder to muffle his own moans.

There's nothing he'd like to do more right now than bask in his own awesomeness, but he has the condom to deal with, and by the time he gets back from the bathroom, Taylor's already gone.

\--

They get the next day off, which is fantastic because Ryan doesn't remember having to nurse a hangover this bad since college; unfortunately, most of his day-off is kind of ruined when he tries to figure out exactly what happened between him and Taylor: he remembers being a sex god and Taylor fleeing into the night, but not an awful lot in between. He hopes that this won't make tomorrow's morning skate weird.

It turns out his concerns are unfounded when he wanders in to the dressing room, only half-awake, and both Ebs and Taylor greet him in unison, before going back to whatever ridiculous conversation they were having beforehand in their crazy kid language, so Ryan goes back to strapping on his pads as their other team mates come trickling in.

Later, during a breather between drills, Ryan goes over and taps Taylor's shin pads with his stick: "Hey. We good?"

Taylor looks at him strangely, tilting his head to the side a little. "'course we're good," he says easily. "Why wouldn't we be?"

"Oh," Ryan says. "Okay. Fine. Great. Do something after?"

"Sure," Taylor agrees and grins before skating over to line up for contact drills, leaving Ryan still a little confused, but feeling much better.

\--

Things sort of go back to normal after that, or at least as normal as things ever are: they lose against Anaheim and win against Tampa Bay, both in shootouts; Stamkos gives Ryan a friendly bump in warm-ups, and Malone ends up buying dinner for Ryan for winning, which is aces because catching up with old friends is great, and free food is even better.

Ryan also gets a few opportunities that week to exercise the recreation of his sex god abilities: he's not exactly sure how it came about last time, but much to his chagrin, it seems that no matter what angle he subtly tries to shift to, he can't quite seem to get the same reaction out of Taylor as he did after that Blues game. Meanwhile, there's also a tiny part of him that wonders if he's getting in over his head all over something that started over a stupid bet; but the sex is not so bad - actually, much to Ryan's chagrin, it's pretty fucking good - so he's perfectly willing to ignore that part of his brain for now.

It all kind of comes to a head after a loss against the Canucks in a game where they really should have won, and no one's happy: as Khabibulin yells loudly in the dressing room before their coach has even made it back in, Ryan meets Taylor's eye, and it becomes an unspoken agreement that Taylor will end up at Ryan's later that evening in an attempt to at least end the evening on a less lousy note.

And they're half-naked, Ryan already having tipped them on to the couch, when Taylor suddenly shoves at him and tries to sit up: "Wait, wait, pause," Taylor says, pulling away. "Okay, look: I know what you're trying to do. It was embarrassing last time it happened, and it's not happening again. So seriously: you need to, like. Stop."

Ryan contemplates pretending not knowing what Taylor’s talking about and making him say it, but the kid is clearly uncomfortable, and Ryan doesn’t want to be a jackass about this. So, instead, he tries to sound encouraging: "But it was awesome," Ryan argues.

Because: yeah, it kind of totally was.

" _Embarrassing_ ," Taylor counters firmly, shaking his head vehemently. "Also, I'm too sober for that right now."

Ryan tilts his head to the side: "Too sober to get laid?"

"Never too sober for that, come on," Taylor counters.

Ryan laughs: "You sure? We _do_ have morning skate and all."

"You're not _that_ big," Taylor deadpans. He pauses, before grinning widely. "Or impressive."

Never one to back down, Ryan sets out to prove him wrong.

\--

Here's the thing: precedence dictates that, when Ryan finally hauls himself out of bed afterwards, to get cleaned up and pull on a pair of boxers, Taylor takes it as his cue to get dressed and head home for the night. They’ve got a system: it works and everyone knows you don't mess with a good thing.

So Ryan's more than a little surprised, and somewhat dismayed, when he gets back to his room ready to collapse into bed and fall into blissed out sleep, and finds Taylor’s still sprawled out on his bed, naked and mostly asleep under Ryan’s comforter.

He stares dumbly for a few minutes, trying to consider the best course of action before deciding on the most direct approach: he prods at Taylor’s shoulder a few times: “Hallsy. Hey, Hallsy, wake the fuck up - you can’t stay here.”

Taylor sighs, burrowing further into Ryan’s blankets. “C’mon Whit, I’m tired,” he mumbles into the pillow without opening his eyes. “Blow you tomorrow morning, okay?”

Ryan opens his mouth to argue, and then closes it again when he decides that it’s probably a lost cause since Taylor’s pretty much dead to the world by this point. Plus, Ryan's having horrifying flashes as to how he might explain to coach and management and the media about how he broke the face of the franchise by dumping him out of bed after fucking him. After a long moment, Ryan climbs into his bed too, because like hell he’s going to sleep on the couch and fuck up his back when he’s got his own perfectly good bed, thanks, but not without shoving Taylor over to make more room and grabbing some of the blankets back for himself first. It’s not as awkward as it could be, sharing this bed: actually, it’s surprisingly warm and comfortable.

_It could be worse_ , is the last thing Ryan remembers thinking before dropping off into sleep as Taylor snuffles a little beside him: _at least I’m getting morning sex out of this_.

("You're smiling," Theo notes to Ryan, when he drops down beside him in the dressing room.

"No, I'm not," Ryan says, distracted with his skate laces.

"Yeah, you are. It's terrifying," Theo continues, undeterred. "Either you murdered someone, or you got laid this morning. Personally, I'm hoping for the first one."

Ryan tries hard not to think about the surprisingly awesome blow job that happened approximately five minutes after he woke up this morning. "I hid the bodies really well," Ryan tells him solemnly and then smiles even more widely.

Theo makes a face: "I'm just going to go...over there now."

When they take to the ice, Ryan almost feels bad when it seems to take Taylor a few extra laps to get back into the groove of things, but then Taylor skates over to fake slewfoot him and grins, and it's all Ryan can do not to laugh.)

\--

“I should probably go home at some point,” Taylor mentions later, after a day of shooting the shit around town. “I thought Ebs would want more alone time with his girlfriend, but they said we should all hang tonight, and just like. Hang out and watch movies at home or something.” He pauses for a moment. “Hey, you want to come?”

To this day, Ryan has no idea why he agreed to this: temporary lapse of judgment. Temporary _insanity_ , maybe even.

When he trails after Taylor into Casa Eberle and Hall, Ebs' sitting on the couch awfully close to a blonde girl, both of them looking like they’re completely engrossed into what’s playing on the television above that weird faux-fireplace. Taylor just grins and bounds over to the couch, throwing himself over the back onto his spot at the end: “Hey kids,” he says, draping one of his freakishly long arms over Ebs’ shoulders and reaches all the way over to Ebs' girlfriend's back.

“Hey yourself,” Ebs says right back and looks perfectly content to nestle his head against Taylor’s shoulder and shift so that his legs are in his girlfriend’s lap. “Where have you been? Me and Lauren, we had a bet going: I said you were with a girl, but she says you weren’t ‘cuz she doesn’t have any friends in Edmonton right now--”

“--but a couple of girls I know will be in town next weekend, so if you guys are around, I can introduce you if you want,” the girlfriend, _Lauren_ , interjects cheerfully.

Taylor leans forward to beam at Lauren: "You're the best," he says sincerely. And then, "Ebs! Pay the lady."

Lauren claps her hands once in excitement: "I like when Taylor's around," she declares. "It's like Tubes is still here. Except short. And doesn't try to grab my boobs," she adds almost regretfully. "I miss him."

Ryan sort of hangs back in the doorway, watching the three of them interact with their easy affection. Mostly, he just feels incredibly _old_.

“Oh, so hey,” Ebs turns to his girlfriend, who’s affectionately rubbing his knee now, probably missing this _Tubes_ , whoever or whatever that is. “The grumpy old dude by the door is Whit: he plays D for us.”

It’s probably too late to make a getaway at this point, so Ryan mans up and goes over to the couch and sits down on Lauren’s other side. “Hey,” he says, sticking out his hand to shake. “Ryan.”

She turns to smile at him, shaking his hand with an impressive grip: “Nice to meet you. I’m Lauren.”

“Lauren’s cool,” Taylor announces, sitting up straighter. “She knows all these hot musical theater chicks - she keeps hooking me up and everything: she’s pretty much the ultimate wingman.”

Ryan raises an eyebrow: “Musical theatre?”

Lauren shrugs, grinning ruefully, “Music performance major at Calgary - sometimes I introduce Taylor to my friends.”

“She’s pretty much the only reason Hallsy ever gets laid,” Ebs adds solemnly, and then yelps when Lauren and Taylor team up to shove him off the couch. Ebs reaches up to pull Lauren down with him - as the two of them laugh in a tangled mass of limbs on the floor, they miss the bemused smirk that passes between Taylor and Ryan.

\--

It turns out Ebs and Lauren had been knee-deep in a “The Bachelor” marathon before Ryan and Taylor had showed up, and they don’t look like they’ll be surrendering the remote control anytime soon, so Ryan settles into the couch, bracing himself for some really shitty reality television.

(“I thought you guys would be watching Canadian football or something,” he says idly as The Bachelor gazes soulfully into the camera lens and lists off his unreasonable criteria for his potential future mate. “Isn’t that what Canadians do?”

Lauren and Taylor let out a collectively loud groan. Ebs just ignores them: “The CFL season ended two weeks ago, man.”

“I hate CFL,” Taylor grumbles. “I ended up watching _so much of it_ last month because Ebby likes it.”

“ _Your dad’s_ CFL,” Ebs retorts. Then he turns to Ryan and grins: “No, seriously: his dad played in the CFL.”

“And it’s _still_ boring!” Taylor laments. “Shouldn’t that just be proof of how much it sucks? Even my dad couldn’t make it awesome.”

Lauren leans over and wraps Taylor up into a sympathetic hug: “Jordan makes me watch a lot of CFL with him, too. It’s cruel. Let’s run away together where there’s no Canadian football.”

“Okay,” Taylor says pathetically, hooking his chin against her shoulder. “And Ebs will feel bad when he’s left alone with nothing but CFL and Ryan Whitney.”

Ryan’s almost impressed at how adept Ebs seems to be at ignoring his girlfriend and roommate’s antics. Then again, Ebs _willingly_ hangs out with these two, so maybe he’s just a glutton for punishment.)

Ten minutes later, he’s already sick of the duster on the television in the ill-fitting suit, trying to decide between ten marginally attractive women.

Taylor seems to run out of patience with the show about ten minutes after that, because he finally extracts his arm, stretches, and announces that he’s going to his room to play Call of Duty instead: “Whit, you coming?”

Ryan trails Taylor down the hall, away from where Ebs and Lauren are still engrossed with The Bachelor’s seemingly difficult choice (“ _Haha, Sophie’s choice_ ,” Ryan had said when the duster had picked the platinum blonde Sophie to stay another week - only Lauren had laughed at his terribly clever joke, which made her okay in his books), to Taylor’s surprisingly neat bedroom, where he tosses Ryan a controller and gestures to him to sit.

“So, Lauren,” Ryan perches on the edge of the bed. “She seems nice.”

“She _is_ nice,” Taylor nods, flicking on the television. “She’s great, and Ebs is the best: they’re good for each other,” he adds as they wait for the game to load.

They’re about forty minutes in, and halfway through one of the missions, when Ryan is suddenly acutely aware of how close they’re sitting together on Taylor’s bed, how Taylor’s knee is pressed casually against his. They finish the rest of the level with little difficulty.

“Break time,” Taylor says when they’ve finally cleared the zone, and then sticks the game into a save point before dropping the controller on to the floor and shoving Ryan down onto the bed instead.

“Uh, what the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Ryan says, but already he’s angling upwards to kiss Taylor, his controller forgotten.

“Well,” Taylor replies, his hands shamelessly toying with the hem of Ryan’s shirt. “It’s just that we’ve never done it in _my_ bed before. It could be fun.”

Ryan pulls back for a moment to help a little with Taylor tugging the shirt over his head. “Hallsy: your roommate and his girlfriend are _in the next room_ ,” he warns, even as he’s working at the buttons on Taylor’s shirt.

“We’ll be quiet,” Taylor promises, and Ryan kind of knows from past experience that he’s pretty much lying, but Taylor can be convincing when he wants to be, and the hands tugging at the fly of Ryan’s jeans right now are plenty convincing.

\--

When Ryan wakes up in the morning, the first thing he realizes is that he’s definitely not in his own room; he also notices that, judging from the colour-scheme and general décor and emptiness of the bedroom, he probably didn’t end up back at some girl’s place. The third thing he notices is that he’s got Taylor’s sleep-octopus limbs draped all over him. He puts all three of these facts together and deduces that he most definitely fell asleep in Taylor’s bed.

_Goddammit._

Carefully, he extracts himself from bed and pulls on his discarded clothes tossed carelessly on the ground the night before. From the other side of the apartment, he can hear the shower running in Ebs’ room and decides that this would probably be the best time to make a getaway before anyone else realizes that he’s accidentally spent the night.

Unfortunately, Ebs is in the kitchen by the time Ryan gets there en route to sneaking out the front door. They kind of stare awkwardly at each other for a moment.

“Cereal?” Ebs finally offers.

“Sure.”

“We have Cheerios, Vector, Corn Flakes and. Um. Some Raisin Bran. Uh. If you want. Since you’re old.”

Ryan just tiredly flips him the bird and reaches for the Corn Flakes and an empty bowl.

“So, uh," Ebs begins awkwardly. "Are you two…together?”

Alarmed, Ryan looks up so fast that he thinks he might have whiplash - "What? No! Just, you know. Hanging out. Whatever.”

“Right. Okay. Well then.”

“Yeah.”

The door to Ebs’ room clicks open just then and Lauren comes out in an oversized t-shirt and her hair wrapped up in a towel. Her smile doubles in size when she sees Ryan: “Good morning!”

Ryan grunts in response, bracing himself for whatever terrible ridiculousness that is inevitably coming.

As Lauren wanders around the kitchen, digging for a spoon and her own cereal bowl, Ryan can hear her start humming under her breath, something familiar and vaguely annoying, before she finally bursts into song: “YOU! MAKE! ME! FEEL LIKE I’M LIVING A TEEN! AGE! DREAM!” And hey: at least her background as a music performance major means that she can stay on key.

She pauses after her rousing rendition of the chorus to put a hand on her hip and turn to glare accusingly at Ryan: “I can’t believe Taylor didn’t tell us you were his boyfriend!”

“They’re just hanging out, apparently,” Ebs tells her, looking vaguely unhappy. “So he’s not.”

Ryan could swear that Lauren says something like ‘ _yet_ ’ under her breath, but before he can call her on it and correct her, she’s distracted by Taylor choosing that exact moment to wander into the kitchen.

“Taylor! Hi!” Lauren all but shouts. “Morning! I can’t introduce you to my girl friends anymore. They’re all taken. Or gay. Which is a lifestyle I totally support!”

It seems that Taylor has no idea about what she's talking about: Ryan's not sure if this is attributed to the lack of caffeine, the early hour of morning, or willful ignorance, but whatever it is, Taylor just blinks sleepily at her, before making his way over to the coffee pot and emitting a vaguely pathetic noise when he finds it empty.

Ryan sighs: “I’m going to go use your shower. And when I am done, I’m going to pretend that this morning never happened.”

When he gets out of the bathroom ten minutes later, he finds Taylor intently watching the coffee maker as it slowly drips a pot of caffeinated nectar, and Ebs lying on the couch with his head in his girlfriend’s lap: “You’re a good person,” Lauren tells Ebs, gently stroking his hair.

Ryan's not sure he wants to know.

(“Nah, Ebs doesn’t care," Taylor tells Ryan as he goes with him to the lobby of their building to wait for a cab. "He probably just thinks it’s weird that Lauren pretty much wants to adopt you, man.”)

\--

The team goes out again the next evening, morning skate pushed back until early afternoon, so partying is inevitable, really - “We need a code word,” Taylor says, leaning heavily against the bar, almost spilling his drink all over Ryan’s shirt.

Ryan just stares at him: “What are you, fucking fourteen years old?”

“I’m just saying. At least then it would be clear what we wanted to do, and no one else would know,” Taylor continues, undeterred.

“Listen, why the hell would I say _Alphaghetti_ or something equally stupid every time I wanted to get laid?”

And then Taylor’s grinning so wide that Ryan sincerely wants to brain himself for opening his mouth in the first place.

It could totally be worse though: the whole thing brings a whole new level of hilarious stupidity to…whatever _this_ is, because if Taylor’s going to insist on using the stupid code word, Ryan should have free reign to give him a hard time about it, right?

Ryan ends up going home with Taylor that night anyway, since easy convenience wins out so often. “I’m going to lowball this so that you can feel better about yourself: make me an offer you can’t spell!” Ryan tells him, trying desperately to hold back his laughter as he backs Taylor into the bed.

Taylor gives him an unimpressed look: “Blow me.”

“Only if you can spell it,” Ryan says, raising an eyebrow.

“F-U-C-K-O-F-F,” Taylor spells out, glaring.

This time, Ryan’s much less successful at holding in his laughter. “That’s more like it,” Ryan announces, pulling Taylor in for a messy kiss while working the zipper of his pants.

And that's kind of how Ryan ends up accidentally waking up in Taylor's bed for the second time in three days. He’s feeling a little less self-conscious this time around, especially when he wanders out into the kitchen and sees Lauren bent over something in front of the stove. Ebs gives him a pained smile from the breakfast nook - Ryan has no idea if it has to do with his presence or whatever Lauren seems to be cooking:

“Good morning!” she trills happily. “You’re just in time - pancakes?”

Ryan stares at Ebs, who just looks right back at Ryan. Finally, Ebs cracks first and blurts out: “Honey, why is my pancake shaped like a butt?”

“They’re hearts!” Lauren says, handing a plate of questionably shaped pancakes to Ryan.

Ebs peers closer at his plate. “I know that. But um...they look butt-shaped.”

“It’s fine,” Ryan interrupts, leaning over to inspect his own plate. “They’re, um. Heart shaped…if I don’t look too closely. I'm sure they taste like normal pancakes, right?"

Ryan's saved from having to further wax poetic about the pancakes when Taylor appears and leans against to the breakfast island beside him, and reaching across the table to steal Ebs' mug of coffee: "What're we having?"

"Pancakes!" Lauren tells him. "Do you want some?"

"Yeah," Taylor nods, taking a long swallow of coffee and ignoring the unintimidating glare that Ebs is sending his way. "Oh, hey Lauren: why haven’t you brought any of your friends around lately? What’s up with that?”

Lauren sighs, sliding the last of the pancakes onto a plate: “I told you already: all my friends stopped being single!" And then she pauses and clears her throat, like something really ingenious has just occurred to her: "Hey, I know! You could date, like, Ryan, instead!"

Taylor makes a face as he digs for a fork: “Gross. He’s eating ass-shaped pancakes.”

“ _Thank_ you,” Ebs mutters.

“They’re hearts!” Lauren all but yells, throwing her spatula into the sink and crossing her arms. "Even though none of you deserve them!"

“They taste good either way,” Taylor says trying to sound comforting around a mouthful of breakfast. “As long as they don't taste like how they look. Which they don't, probably.”

Then Ryan and Taylor both start snickering.

Ebs puts down his fork and slides his plate over to his girlfriend: “You know, I don’t think I fully understand _why_ you two are laughing, but I _still_ lost my appetite. Thanks.”

\--

The next time they're all out in Edmonton, Ryan realizes that he's been jonsing for some no strings attached hook up with a woman for a while now, and sets out to make this happen. He's still weighing his options and prospects when Taylor sidles up to him and nudges him hard: "Hey Whit."

"Alphaghetti?" Ryan says, distractedly. "Not tonight, kid. Gonna get me a lady."

"No, not Alphaghetti," Taylor tells him patiently. "I'm going home with that girl there." He gestures with his shoulder at a pretty, dark-skinned girl with long hair who is pulling on her coat and chatting with a cute redhead.

"Good for you?" Ryan says. "I don't care - why are you telling me?"

Taylor rolls his eyes. "Because. She has a friend. And her friend wanted to know if _I_ knew anyone for her. And since Ebs, Gags and Cogs all have girls, and Maggie's into that tennis player chick who looks like Khabi, I thought of you."

Ryan blinks, clearly caught up with the wrong details: "You think she looks like Khabi too?"

"Well _yeah_ ," Taylor says, like it's the most obvious thing in the world. "Of course she does: he's her _dad_."

"Seriously?" Ryan asks in disbelief. " _Maggie_? That kid's got bigger balls than all of us!"

Taylor nods: "Sure," he says distracted. "But I don't want to talk about Maggie's balls; I want to get laid. And that hot girl there wants to have sex with me. So you can stand here thinking about Maggie's balls while I'm doing it with that hot girl, or you can go over there and talk to her friend who's also a total smokeshow." He nods again, signalling the end of the conversation as he backs away, grinning. "You're welcome, Whit."

Ryan thinks about it and decides that talking to pretty girls is infinitely hotter than thinking about Maggie's balls any day of the week. So he knocks back the rest of his drink, makes his way over to the stool recently vacated by the redhead's friend and introduces himself. She smiles at him and shakes his hand - Taylor's right: she _is_ cute. She doesn't seem to know who Ryan is, but she's funny and smart and a good conversationalist. They share a cab at the end of the night: Ryan thinks about how Taylor's a surprisingly good wingman for someone who's got no game - and then the cute ginger girl invites him up to her apartment, and he stops thinking about anything at all.

\--

Ryan's minding his own business and waiting for their flight to Los Angeles to board, when someone sits down next to him in the airport waiting area and snags one of his ear buds: of _course_ it’s Taylor, who ignores Ryan’s glare and stuffs it into his own ear. “What are we listening to?”

And, okay, this is a little embarrassing because Ryan’s totally listening to his guilty pleasure mix right now, but whatever: “’Blue Monday,’” he finally relents. “You know, New Order?”

He gets a completely blank stare in return.

“Uh,” Ryan says. “Maybe you’re more familiar with the shitty Orgy cover that came out, like, ten years ago?”

Taylor snickers: “There’s a band called ‘Orgy’?”

So this is Ryan’s life now: he’s listening to New Order in the San Jose airport with someone who’s not even old enough to remember ‘Blue Monday,’ _or_ the cover of it - so fuck _that_.

The song then flips to the next track, Depeche Mode’s “Just Can’t Get Enough,” and Taylor’s kind of bopping along to the 80’s synthesizer, which is incredibly lame but it makes Ryan want to smile, and that’s almost way worse.

“Go find someone else to bother, kid,” he finally says, nudging Taylor. “Before I have to get all grumpy old guy on you.”

“You’re _always_ a grumpy old guy,” Taylor laughs, but complies, giving Ryan his earbud back: Ryan resolutely does not watch as Taylor bounds off again, no doubt to annoy one of their other poor, unsuspecting teammates, like Ebs.

\--

Ryan's always been a big fan of Christmas, but not so much of the aftermath. This year, it's particularly shitty because he fucks up his ankle pretty badly during the second game back, and seriously: fuck his fucking _life_ right in its stupid face.

He's still busy feeling sorry for himself a few days later, when his phone buzzes thrice. Against his better judgement, he checks the incoming messages – there are three text messages, all from Talbot:

_**hope ur doing ok. They call him jumbo jo cuz he loves to eat hot dogs** _

and

_**also his dicks real big** _

and

_**And hes tall** _

Ryan seriously does not understand why Maxime Talbot does the majority of the things that he does, and he’s pretty sure that these texts do nothing to cheer up his sour mood, especially when it occurs to him that he’s probably going to lag behind on the bet with his injury and all.

Everything sucks: Ryan’s entitled to a bit of self-pity, so it’s totally justified that he’s still kind of moping when Taylor calls and announces that he's coming over now with dinner, so Ryan should open his door.

"The fuck are you doing here?" Ryan wants to know, when he hears his door open and shut, a take-out box of pasta gets dropped down in front of him and a plastic fork hits him in the back of the head.

"Horc said someone had to come over and make sure you didn’t crawl into a hole and try to stay there forever," Taylor tells him, throwing himself over the back of the couch to sit down.

Ryan leans over to open the box of take-out and makes a face: he's not crazy about white sauce, but it's not the worst either, so he digs in anyway with a grunt of thanks - "Let me guess: you drew the short straw?"

"N'aw," Taylor says easily. "I volunteered."

"That's because you have no sense of self-preservation," Ryan says, rolling his eyes.

Taylor just laughs: "That's what Horc said. How’re you feeling, champ?"

"Fuck you: how the fuck do you _think_ I'm feeling?" Ryan snipes, but it sounds half-hearted, even to himself.

"Could be worse," Taylor says, unfazed, but he does reach over to pat Ryan's arm. "At least you didn't sprain, like, your dick."

Ryan pauses, the plastic fork halfway to his mouth, to stare incredulously at Taylor: "...out of complete curiosity, do you ever listen to yourself when you talk?"

"I try not to.”

They don't say anything for a while and watch the rest of the second period of the Sabres game instead. During the intermission, Ryan puts down his empty take-out box and pushes it across the coffee table. He thinks about telling Taylor about the bet. "But seriously, why are you here?" he asks instead.

Taylor shrugs. "Just wanted to hang out. Want a blowjob or something? Might make you feel better."

Ryan just shakes his head, suddenly kind of feeling better than he has in days at how familiar and comfortable this actually is: "Nah, too depressed. Thanks for the offer though."

"No problem," Taylor says and smiles so widely that Ryan can't help that the corners of his own mouth are kind of twitching upwards, too. Ryan decides that maybe he'll wait a bit longer and then he'll come clean about the whole thing later, because right now, it seems like it might be better to just sit in companionable silence.


	4. interlude two

Taylor likes to think his mother raised him right: he respects women, he gets tested on a regular basis, he doesn't lead girls on; but tits are tits, and good ass is good ass. (Sorry, Mom, not that he'd ever talk about this with her.) The thing is, even though Ryan's seriously lacking in the tits department and his ass is nothing special, he's funny and not nearly as much of a jerk as he likes to believe. It's not like they're a thing - he still picks up where he can and he can admit Ryan's got some beauty moves of his own for the ladies - but when he just wants to get laid without worry, it's nice to have someone he can trust in his back pocket.

While Ryan's not the hottest person Taylor's ever slept with, he can admit that it's probably the best sex he's had. Apparently the ten extra years of experience does make a difference, because it's nothing like awkwardly fooling around with his buddies in Juniors, or trying to figure out how to get a girl off, and the fact that he can just relax and let Ryan hold the reins is pretty cool. After that first time, they settle into a sort of routine, and it's not like taking it up the ass makes him the girl or anything. It feels good - fucking awesome, in fact, and it's nothing he can get anywhere else - and Ryan's a bossy fucker at the best of times, so Taylor's pretty sure any attempts of his would just end in chirping. And while that can be fun, he's pretty sure in that situation it would be a total boner killer.

The thing is, now that Ryan's hurt his ankle, they have to get more creative. Doing it face-to-face had eventually gotten less weird, especially after Ryan realized that Taylor was flexible enough to hook his ankles over Ryan's shoulders - the burn in his thighs was totally worth blowing Ryan's mind - but now he actually has to do some of the work. He'd be more annoyed by it, but if nothing else it's probably good practice for the future.

Not that everything's about sex. Okay, usually it is, but they've got a nice thing going sometimes where Taylor can hang out and ignore Ryan's grumpy nattering and escape the love nest that his apartment turns into whenever Lauren's around, because while she's great and Ebs is the best, it's kind of nauseating when they get going. It's not that he's jealous, because he really isn't into the whole relationship thing, especially not when the whole number one draft pick thing gets him more tail than ever.

Taylor knows there's no way this arrangement between Ryan and him is going to last, which he's really okay with since that will definitely be for the best. But he's going to get what he can out of it while it does. It's both the smart and the practical thing to do.


	5. part three: #ryanwhitneyisbeingahugenonbeauty

Things start getting pretty messed up in the New Year: Ryan's pretty annoyed about having to watch games from the press box with his fucked up ankle, because who doesn't want to get out there and play? It’s even shittier when he sees Ebs go down against the Flames since it always feels terrible to watch a teammate get hurt, especially when there isn't anything you can do about it: it turns out Ebs also has a sprained ankle, which sucks for the kid.

The Flames win the game, too, and _that's_ kind of like getting kicked in the face extra hard on top of everything else.

First injuries do something weird to Ebs and Taylor’s already strangely codependent relationship. Taylor spends the next week clucking after a limping Ebs like a super inefficient mother hen, who remembers to do things like stock the fridge with Ebs' favourite juice, but doesn't wake up when Ebs' appendix practically ruptures, so that Ebs has to drive himself to the hospital.

(Ryan is never going to let Taylor live that one down. But neither will Ebs. Nor will the rest of the team.)

Ebs does his best brave smile at the Oilers staff, which gets him exactly what he wants: a week to go back to Calgary where the care taking will actually be competent and he can get babied by both his mom and his girlfriend.

Ryan doesn't say anything when Taylor starts showing up more often at Ryan’s apartment just to hang out while Ebs is gone; he remembers the kid's offhanded comment, once, about how he kind of hates living alone. Plus, with Ryan’s own sprained ankle, he supposes it's not overly terrible to have the company.

Things seem to be regressing into a never-ending spiral of shit for Ryan these days: by the middle of January, the team doctors tell him that his ankle’s fucked up enough to require _another_ surgery, effectively ending his season at a mere thirty-five games. And really, what does Ryan love more in life than season ending surgery, except for, oh, _pretty much everything else in the known universe_.

Surgery is as unenjoyable as it always is and recovery is slow and painful: he’s still in the midst of it when the All-Star weekend rolls around, which is fucking bullshit because it means that he’s stuck in Edmonton for the break, basking in immobility and snowstorms. The only vague silver-lining to this sack of crap seems to be that Ebs is also stuck in Edmonton since his own ankle is still kind of a mess. Somehow, Ryan ends up getting roped into sitting on the surprisingly comfortable couch in Ebs’ apartment with him and Lauren to watch the weekend’s festivities, while Taylor plays for the Young Stars and rubs shoulders with the league’s best and a bunch of dudes who Ryan’s banged for the explicit reason of winning a bet.

(Ryan thinks he may be feeling something in the pit of his stomach that feels an awful lot like the manifestations of guilt. But that’s just _stupid_ , so he wills it away because it’s not like he’s currently experiencing enough self-loathing already or anything.)

Ebs and Lauren prove to be surprisingly good company though: together, the three of them spend the weekend on the couch, sprawled out with pizza and beer, and make fun of Taylor’s hair, Eric Staal’s face, and the Sedin twins’ general existences, until Ryan feels a bit better about his current lot in life.

\--

After the brief respite that is All-Star break, things fall back into a routine: in Ryan’s case, this means mornings of rehab and doctor’s appointments, followed by afternoons and evenings that are either heavy on boredom, or – if the Oilers are at home - spent in the press box, which is even lamer than before, since Ebs has been cleared for action again.

Here’s the other thing: Ryan’s sexual frustration is at an all-time high – he’s still not feeling up to go out with the guys so his opportunities for picking up are kind of limited these days. It’s to the point where he actually kind of wishes he had a steady girlfriend so at least he’d be getting some on the regular. There _is_ one other option, not necessarily a _bad_ one, but Ryan’s sort of leaving it as a last resort because of the nagging guilt that seems to be growing and isn’t really going away. Plus, he’d feel incredibly stupid sending what would essentially be a text message booty call consisting of one word which is also the brand name of a canned pasta.

So no fucking thanks.

Luckily, Taylor shows up pretty regularly to hang out with Ryan anyway, because that seems to be all he does when he’s not playing hockey or hanging out with Ebs. And maybe he’s feeling sympathetic or something, because more often than not, they end up fucking anyway, and not for the first time, Ryan marvels at just how fantastically flexible nineteen year old hockey players can be.

On one of these occasions, Ryan’s phone rings while Taylor’s going down on him, and Ryan finds himself groping blindly for his shrilly ringing Blackberry. “Hey,” he manages out loud before accepting the call. “You mind if I take this?”

Since Taylor’s mouth is currently otherwise occupied, he answers by flipping Ryan off; Ryan takes this as a ‘yeah, sure it’s fine.’

“What would you say if I told you that I boned Jovocop?” is what is blared over the line as soon as Ryan picks up.

Maxime Talbot. Of course.

“I’d say you were a lying sack of shit, you knob,” Ryan says, trying his best to keep his voice steady.

Talbot sighs, loudly and petulantly: “The options are getting fewer and fewer: Kovalchuk and Chris Phillips each have, like, sixteen kids, man. This bet is getting stupid.”

“ _Getting_?” Ryan repeats in disbelief.

“And didn’t your ankle fall off again or something? Doesn’t that get you less laid than usual? We could call this a draw,” Talbot says, and Ryan knows that this is his way of being kind and sending condolences. But Ryan’s also aware that Talbot is clearly telegraphing his desire to spend less time strategizing and more time hooking up with Pennsylvanian women with misguided affections for ridiculous human beings.

Whatever: Ryan just wants this conversation over and done with - “Fine, cool, go away – you’re bugging me.” He hopes he sounds sufficiently annoyed. He has a feeling he didn’t quite manage though, because Taylor definitely didn’t pause the blow job and is currently mouthing at Ryan’s balls.

Talbot’s silent for a moment. And then he starts laughing: “Man, are you getting laid right now? Did you pick up the phone during sex?” he asks, incredulously. “What is _wrong_ with you?”

Ryan takes that as a belated cue to hang up the phone. Then he throws it across the room for good measure and concentrates on not bucking his hips without warning, since Taylor will, on occasion, bite in retaliation. Bastard.

(“It’s rude to take phone calls while getting laid,” Taylor says as he’s leaving, shrugging on his winter coat.

“You could have stopped,” Ryan points out.

“No,” Taylor manages, but just barely, to keep a straight face. “You’re old, injured _and_ rude: you need _something_ to live for.”

“You’re such a hero,” Ryan tells him sarcastically. “You’re the worst.”

“I’m the _best_ ,” Taylor counters smugly, waving and already halfway out the front door.)

\--

The next two weeks find Ryan becoming more and more concerned that he might be completely in over his head as he finds himself getting roped into increasingly weird but admittedly great sex with Taylor, which makes it even harder to resolutely speak up and put an end to...whatever this is. Furthermore, Ryan can’t believe he’s let things get so stupidly out of hand.

So he’s not even all that surprised when Taylor shows up at his apartment after the Oilers beat the Thrashers during a Saturday afternoon tilt, practically bounding in when Ryan opens the door. Taylor is beaming at him, his smile infectious, and despite Ryan’s best intentions, he finds himself crowding Taylor up against the closed front door.

“First hat trick, huh, kid?” Ryan says. “Not bad.”

Taylor grins: “Hell fucking yeah.”

And that’s pretty much all that needs to be said before Ryan finds himself getting guided back across the apartment towards the couch, albeit slower than usual as they account for the walking boot that he’s wearing. He shoves a laughing Taylor down on the couch, and he’s about to carefully shift himself on to it as well, when he pauses: “Wait. Why are you here instead of out?”

Taylor shrugs, unconcerned. “Dude, it’s only like seven pm: I’m going out after this. I’m shooting for a hatty tonight to celebrate my hatty.”

Of course he is.

It takes a bit of effort, but Ryan considers it a great victory when he manages to avoid both laughing at him and bringing up Taylor’s continued lack of game – let the kid dream on. And this is why, later, if the following incident were ever to be brought up again, Ryan will blame it on the fact that he expended so much energy on keeping himself from making fun of Taylor that he could not have possibly contained the next ridiculous thing that comes out of his mouth:

“So. Uh, since you got the hat trick and all, it’s kind of a special occasion, right? So I guess, um, you could get on top…if you wanted?”

Taylor stares blankly at him: “On top? Is that okay for your ankle? Can you even bend like that? Can _anyone_?”

Confused, Ryan raises an eyebrow at him - “What are you talking about? Bend what way? It’s really not that complicated.”

And it’s then that Ryan realizes that Taylor literally has no idea what Ryan’s talking, the same moment that everything apparently clicks in Taylor’s brain, because his cheeks start to redden in a way that creeps all the way down his neck, a bashfulness that Ryan’s never seen before. “ _Ohhhhh._ Um...yeah,” Taylor stutters out. “We could do that. We could totally do that. Uh, if you wanted to?”

“Oh fuck,” Ryan manages not to laugh, but just barely. This situation is getting more and more absurd by the moment, but also – awesome, because while he figures it probably wouldn’t have happened, there was always the vague concern in the back of his mind that bottoming for the kid might result in an endlessly annoying amount of chirping. “Hallsy, I’m not going to make you do anything you don’t want to—”

“—No, I want to, totally,” Taylor interrupts, pretty unconvincingly in Ryan’s opinion. “It’s just that, uh. You know—“

“—so just roll over and take off your pants,” Ryan steamrolls on cheerfully, undeterred and pulling his t-shirt up over his head and tossing it on to the coffee table. “Get ready, because I’m about to rock you like a hurricane.”

That puts a temporary pause into Taylor’s awkward protests: “How old _are_ you?” he says instead, making a face. And then: “But seriously, if you wanted to—”

“—seriously, I was just trying to be nice, kid,” Ryan says, reaching between the couch cushions for his emergency stash of lube and condoms. “It’s cool if you don’t want it like that: for what it’s worth, I prefer it the way we’ve been doing it too, okay?”

There’s a long pause as Taylor looks up at Ryan and doesn’t say anything, a silence long enough for Ryan to almost become uncomfortable. Finally, Taylor nods and says, “Yeah, cool,” and reaches up to tug Ryan down against him on the couch, mindful of Ryan’s ankle, and after a moment, he fits his mouth against Ryan’s, hot and wet and familiar.

Ryan decides that it’s probably best to stop thinking for now.

\--

Ryan’s witnessed many unexpected things this season – for example, he wouldn’t have anticipated landing a season-ending injury in December; nor would he have ever imagined actually calling a draw in his bet with Talbot. In March, he leans forward in his spot up in the press box to watch a hotshot rookie try to fight Derek Dorsett, which is yet another thing he would never have been able to predict at the beginning of the season – he watches as Dorsett does a take-down with ease and Taylor lands awkwardly. Ryan winces in sympathy but resolves not to get distracted from watching the rest of the game.

The next time he sees Taylor is after the game when Ryan drops by Taylor and Ebs’ place. Ebs rolls his eyes good-naturedly and lets him in, pointing him in the direction of Taylor’s room, where he’s very obviously sulking and glaring petulantly at his new crutches.

"I think there must be a pandemic," Ryan tells Taylor, sitting down beside him on the bed and patting his arm. "Fucked up ankles for all. Solidarity."

Taylor sighs. "Did you see my fight?" he asks. "Did it at least _look_ badass, kind of?"

"Not even a little bit, kid," Ryan says, shaking his head. "Good try though."

(He does end up giving Taylor a sympathy blowjob, though: Ryan figures it’s the least he can do.)

Their incidental injuries mean that they start spending almost excessive amounts of time together these days: they do fan appearances together and do the stupid required rehabs pool laps together every morning. When Gags end up with a freak injury of his own, Ryan expects him to hang out and commiserate with them as well – he doesn’t though, opting to spend all his time with his girlfriend instead:

“Ahahaha,” he says to Ryan. “You guys suck. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go get a lot of recuperation laid from my hot and awesome girlfriend.”

Ryan almost indignantly points out that Gags can just shut up his stupid face because Ryan’s probably also going to be getting plenty laid in the next week too, from his not-so-hot not-girlfriend but that’s certainly a moot point – he manages to catch himself just in time though. The sheer fact that this is possibility to be brought up as a counterpoint presents the glaringly obvious fact and an awkward reminder that Ryan has a problem – a blond, nineteen year old problem – that likely needs to be dealt with sooner rather than later. The horrific realization hits Ryan when it occurs to him that Taylor’s just talked him into getting a fucking _Twitter account_. He’s starting to feel an awful lot like his late Aunt Gertrude, who seemed to constantly be having blond, nineteen year old problems, rest her soul.

_Fuck Talbot,_ Ryan thinks morosely. _This is probably all his fucking fault._

\--

For the most part, Ryan’s been perfectly content to ignore the more problematic aspects of the sheer stupidity of his current predicament, and for the most part, it seems that it’s a fairly reasonable course of action, as long as the situation doesn’t escalate.

And then, one day, after a particularly grueling physio session, Ryan’s waiting around at the rink for Taylor to finish up with his meeting with the therapist because of their carpool, when he realizes that Taylor’s already in the lobby and in the midst of a phone conversation. Taylor seems to be distracted by whoever’s on the line and doesn’t notice Ryan approaching.

Ryan doesn’t mean to eavesdrop, but the next words out of Taylor’s mouth make him freeze in his tracks:

“Don’t worry, he’ll come around – he wants to make this work too, trust me.”

_Fuck._

So Ryan has no choice but to do what any sensible person would do in this situation: he turns around quickly, beelines out of the building, and hails a cab instead.

Then, very rationally, he starts ignoring the source of the problem.

As the week continues, he maintains his very practical mission of staunchly avoiding Taylor, purposely staggering his own physio schedule so that they don’t match up; it’s somewhat convenient that the Oilers are currently on a road trip so they’re not forced into the press box together with Gags sandwiched awkwardly between them. On one hand, this is a great plan for Ryan to be motivated to go out again – it turns out his injury is money in the bank for wheeling sympathy sex: Ryan tries not to be _too_ cranky about all the laid he’s probably missed out on while moping. On the other hand, he almost misses having the kid around. Taylor may have been a part-time fuck-buddy, but he’s also a full-time teammate and friend, so flat-out avoiding him altogether is actually kind of hard. In fact, this is probably the only time in Ryan’s life where he longs for the days of the telegram and rotary phones: modern technology makes it hard to ignore Taylor when he keeps leaving weird messages on Ryan’s phone, and eventually, even weirder messages on Twitter – what the hell is _a huge nonbeauty_ anyway?

And that's not even mentioning the series of weird text messages, courtesy of Ebs that eventually come trickling in -

_**WHERE R U** _

and

_**y u no <3 taytay nomore???** _

and

**_ryan. he's your teenage dream come on. LITERALLY_ **

Ryan can’t help but fire back a **_What the fuck Ebs???_** at the last one. A moment later he gets two more texts in rapid succession:

**_Sorry! Lauren stole my phone_ **

And then followed by,

_**But srsly trouble in paradise????** _

Ryan decides that enough is enough. He fires off a quick _**go fuck yourselves**_ text intended for both Ebs and Lauren, and then steels himself to go make a phone call: the other line clicks on after five rings and Ryan blurts out what he needs to say before he can stop himself - "Hey Hallsy? You should come over. We might need to talk."

\--

“What the fuck, Whit,” Taylor grumbles at Ryan after getting let into the apartment. His crutches have been upgraded to a walking boot, identical to Ryan’s, and Ryan takes a moment to marvel at how absolutely fucking ridiculous this entire situation is. “I was napping. You don’t return messages and then you suddenly you need to talk? What gives, man?”

"Okay. Shut up," Ryan says, shaking his head. "This is really important, Hallsy. You want to sit down or something?"

Taylor pauses and tilts his head for a moment, like he's considering how serious Ryan's being right now. He eases himself onto the couch and peers up at him: "Is everything all right?"

Ryan sits down across from him, suddenly nervous and decides that it’s best just to bite the bullet. "Okay, listen up, kid: this? Like this...whatever it is that we're doing?” he gestures to the space between the two of them. “Whatever you might _think_ it is? It's not a relationship. It's just...it's _not_ , okay?"

There’s a long beat of silence as Taylor's brow furrows a little in confusion: "...yeah? And?"

"And..." Ryan takes a deep breath, steeling himself for the next part, deciding that it’s probably for the best just to blurt it all out at once. "You were part of a bet, okay? Uh. Me and Maxime Talbot were just, you know. It was his stupid idea. We were trying to see who could bang more draft picks, and it got kind of out of hand." And then, like an afterthought: "...you can punch me if you want, um. Just like...don't break my nose or anything, okay?"

Taylor just kind of continues staring blankly at Ryan. "Uh, yeah. Well, I thought we were just having sex. And I knew that part about the bet too, man."

Wait. What? " _What_?"

"Yeah,” Taylor continues, undeterred. “Talbot told me during All-Star weekend."

Now it’s Ryan’s turn to be confused: “What the fuck was Talbot doing at All-Star weekend?”

Taylor shrugs. “I dunno, trying to sleep with number one draft picks? Something about not letting the Americans win.”

“Fuck him! Bastard stole my line!” Ryan blurts out, before he can stop himself.

“ _You’re_ American,” Taylor points out.

“No, the opposite of that: not letting the _Canadians_ win; that’s how I got Erik John…you know what, never mind,” Ryan says. This afternoon is definitely not going the way he had thought it would be going. He forces himself to get back on track: “Uh. So...did you sleep with him? Talbot, I mean."

“Nah,” Taylor grins mischievously. “Thought you might like to win your bet."

That startles a laugh out of Ryan. _Wow._ "So…you're not mad?" he ventures.

Taylor looks at him, genuinely confused: "Why would I be mad? It's kind of awesome that I was part of the bet if I’m being honest – it’s so stupid that it’s fucking hilarious. Plus, no disrespect to you Whit, but a) who says I'd want to date you, b) I don’t even want a girlfriend right now, c) you'd make a terrible _boyfriend_ , and fourth of all, you'd be crushed when I broke up with you and it would fuck up our friendship forever."

"--wait,” Ryan jumps in, the sudden implications making themselves clear. “Why would you be the one breaking up with _me_? Also fuck you: I'd be a great boyfriend!"

"Well, let's hope I never have to find out," Taylor says cheerfully.

Ryan's still kind of vaguely offended by this entire line of discussion, and then kind of perplexed at this offence that he's taking, but supposes that it's better than the alternative of actually being lampooned into an accidental relationship. It kind of hurts his head when he thinks too hard about it, so it's probably better to just not think about it at all: "So we're cool?"

"Sure," Taylor assures him. And then he arches an eyebrow suggestively in Ryan's direction: "Alphaghetti? Or do I have to spell it out?"

So business as usual, then; Ryan's more than okay with that. He rolls his eyes but leans over unceremoniously to reach into Taylor’s pants: he owes him at least that much.

("This is weird," Ryan notes, staring down at Taylor as their eyes meet - something that they've been subconsciously vigilant about making sure never happens during sex.

Taylor considers him for a moment. "I have an idea," he finally says, almost shy. "But it'll probably only work as a one-time-deal sort of thing."

And then he's pulling Ryan even closer towards him, clinging on tight and arching his back so that he's pushing up against Ryan. He licks up from Ryan's collarbone, tracing his way up Ryan's neck and jawline, messy and wet, stopping only when their mouths meet sloppily, and he moans into Ryan's mouth in encouragement at the meandering pace that Ryan's set.

It’s slower than usual, careful too, to account for both their injuries. Taylor’s got his arms around Ryan, pulling him in languidly; in fact, the sex is downright _cuddly_.

Ryan feels like this should bother him a lot more than it actually does.)

\--

“You know,” Ryan says as they sit together on Ryan’s couch, each of them with one leg propped up while watching the Flames play the Wild. He shifts his hips a little. “I get called a perv for following ‘girlsinyogapants’ on Twitter, but you get a free pass. Why is that?”

Taylor spares him a glance. “It’s because you’re _old_ ,” he points out. “And a total perv.”

Ryan rolls his eyes. “That really can’t be your answer for everything. I’m not _actually_ old, you know.”

This time, Taylor doesn’t look away from the Flames’ power play, nor does he stop the lazy handjob he’s currently giving Ryan – it’s kind of great that he’s getting jerked off while there’s hockey on, but TSN’s continued close-ups of Ollie Jokenin’s face is kind of harshing his buzz; he can’t decide if this is all kind of the best thing ever, or pretty much the worst thing ever. “It’s worked so far,” Taylor says, without missing a beat.

So everything is status quo, then: Aunt Gertrude would be proud of him, Ryan thinks.

\--

The Oilers limp their way toward the end of the season, finishing up again with another number one draft pick. They all part ways for the summer, somewhat disheartened but not beaten down, anticipation for next season already buzzing in the air.

A week before the draft, Taylor calls Ryan, his voice lazy and bright like afternoon sunshine: “How’s Boston?”

“Good,” Ryan answers truthfully. “Bruins shit everywhere, but what can you do?” He pauses. And then: “Hey - that Seguin kid’s pretty good, isn’t he?”

“Aw, fuck right off, Whit,” Taylor says, but Ryan can tell that he’s still smiling.

They chat for a while, about everything and nothing: how Ebs got burned by that girl at the Worlds, but it’s okay because he’s still got Lauren (Taylor off-handily mentions how the two of them almost broke up back in March, and the realization suddenly dawns on Ryan – it’s probably too late to feel embarrassed about it, so he’s not going to bother), and how their respective off-season routines are going, and how fucking awesome the next season’s going to be.

“You healed up yet?” Ryan wants to know.

“Good as new, yeah,” Taylor confirms. “You?”

“Pretty much.” And then, before Ryan can think of better of it, he asks: “Did you think about visiting at all?”

“Boston?” Taylor says. “I have to go to Minnesota for the draft, but maybe after that - can I? Does that work?”

“You probably can,” Ryan agrees. “But may you? ”

Taylor sighs. “Seriously: _fuck off_ \- I’ll be there.”

\--

True to his word, Taylor does show up in Boston a week after hanging out at the draft where the Oilers brass pick an eighteen year old kid who looks twelve tops - Ryan considers texting Talbot about how relieved he is that they both got bored of their bet - his phone vibrates before he can do it because of _course_ , Talbot’s beat him to it.

Taylor seems genuinely happy to see Ryan, and Ryan supposes there are worst things in life than getting bro-hugged by Taylor Hall in the middle of the arrivals terminal at two in the afternoon.

“So, um,” Taylor says when they’re in Ryan’s car. “I didn’t book a hotel or anything yet, so I was wondering if you had any recommen--”

“--yeah, yeah,” Ryan cuts him off. “You’re staying at my place. You can take the old couch: the springs are shit and will probably break your spine. I kind of hope they do.”

When Ryan finally sneaks a look over at Taylor at the next red light, Taylor’s turned to look out the window, doing little to hide his delighted grin. Ryan pretends not to notice, and starts chirping Taylor about the current state of his hair instead.

They’re almost at Ryan’s place when Taylor suddenly sits up straighter in the passenger seat and announces that he desperately needs food and a shower.

“Jesus,” Ryan groans. “So fucking high-maintenance.”

But Ryan complies anyway: he takes Taylor first to dinner, and then back to his apartment and into the shower, where Taylor blows him for the first time in months and doesn’t even hesitate when Ryan hauls him up afterward to kiss him on the mouth while lazily jerking him off under the almost-lukewarm water.

Afterwards, they end up getting half-dressed and then wandering into Ryan’s bedroom where they fall into the bed and drip water all over the sheets. They watch the Red Sox play the Cardinals on TV and fall asleep before the seventh inning stretch, and this is Taylor’s first day in Boston.

\--

Taylor tells Ryan that he's only staying in Boston for a week or so because he's made plans to see Ebs up in Calgary, but they fall into a routine pretty quickly, hitting the gym early in the morning and occasionally following it up with a five mile run at Taylor's insistence, and Ryan kind of hates him a little bit by the end of the week. It's not all bad, though: it's Taylor's first Independence Day in the States and he only half questions it when Ryan insists that he has to watch _Independence Day_ prior to seeing the fireworks in the name of American patriotism.

The days pass pretty quickly after that: Ryan takes Taylor on whirlwind tours of landmarks in Boston, giving him facts about the city that are only half true - but Taylor laughs when Ryan does things like point to the first Starbucks opened in Boston and tell him that's the site of the 1773 tea party, so at least he's showing someone around who actually appreciates the Ryan Whitney experience of Beantown. Unfortunately, their inability to go to Ryan's favourite bars kind of limits the scope of his tour, but they make up for it by eating their way through the city. Besides, Ryan's come to realize that Taylor's kind of an easy guy to please - just sit him down with a large plate of food and he'll beam happily as he scarfs it down, and somehow, Ryan gets laid out of the deal.

(They fuck on Ryan’s couch in the middle of the afternoon, the rituals of proposition and preparation already down to a science; he pulls on his condom and pushes his slicked up fingers into Taylor with ease. Taylor muffles a moan against the coach cushion when Ryan slides out his fingers and pushes most of the way into him and against his better judgement, kind of really wants to hear him, so he reaches over to tug him up by his hair.

“No, wait,” Taylor manages, turning his head to be better heard. “Don’t do that. It…might get embarrassing. Uh. For me.”

Suddenly a light bulb goes on in Ryan’s head: “Oh fuck. You knew, all this time? You were _withholding_?”

Taylor cranes his head to attempt a glare at Ryan, but right now, like this, with Ryan buried deep inside him, it’s not even a little effective: “Don’t start with me, man.”

“Fine,” Ryan says, letting go of Taylor’s hair and grudgingly conceding to the fact that he’s going to have to use his hands after all.)

At the end of a week of wandering the city, getting laid, and cursing out Taylor for guilting him into running with him, Ryan gets a call from his mom to remind him that they've got family dinner on Friday night - Ryan tries to beg out of it, using the excuse that he's got a friend in town.

"Bring your friend, Ryan," his mother tells him patiently, but Ryan knows he's fucked because she's definitely using her 'won't take no for an answer' voice. "We hardly get to see you as it is."

And there it is: Ryan wonders what it is about talking on the phone with his mom that always makes him feel like he's regressed about twenty years of his life.

\--

Dinner ends up going smoothly: neither of his brothers have girlfriends who are actually in Boston right now, so Ryan's not subject to as much of the _when are you going to settle down with a nice girl?_ conversations as usual, which is greatly appreciated. His parents order a couple of bottles of wine for the table, and Ryan has to muffle a laugh when Taylor politely declines and sticks to water instead. To their credit, neither Ryan’s brothers nor his father ask Taylor too many questions about what it's like to play for the Oilers, nor do they brag too much about their hometown team winning the Cup. In return, Taylor listens attentively when Ryan's family tells him about their own lives, and much to Ryan's chagrin, the pre-requisite embarrassing stories of Ryan's childhood, as necessitated by the presence of anyone who's not family but is currently attending a Whitney family dinner.

After the meal, Ryan’s mother pulls him aside while his dad, Colin and Sean, are busy informing Taylor about all the reasons why their beloved Red Sox are going to spank the Blue Jays this year - Taylor mostly looks bemused, nodding in all the right places.

“I understand why you haven't brought a girl home in ages now, honey,” his mother tells him, smoothing invisible wrinkles out of the front of his shirt, and Ryan fights the urge to duck away. “Your boyfriend is very nice. He’s looks awfully young, though, if you ask me.”

Ryan groans: “I'm not gay, Mom. And I don’t have a girlfriend mostly by choice.”

His mother laughs a little: “But he was so attentive at dinner! All his pleases and thank yous, Ryan: he’s such a polite young man. He didn’t even drink the wine.”

Trying to discreetly roll his eyes, Ryan silently counts to five before answering: “That's because he’s nineteen, Mom.”

His mother drops her hands to her sides, looking positively scandalized: “Ryan!”

Suddenly, Ryan feels kind of like that time he got caught for blaming Sean for breaking their mom’s favourite teapot. He pulls her into a hug before she can say anything else though: “So glad I came out to dinner, Mom! You’re so great,” he says in an attempt to both distract and mollify.

Almost reluctantly, she sighs and wraps her arms around him as well: “I hope you know what you’re doing, Ryan. For what it’s worth, I do like him though.” She pauses, and then smiles wryly. "I think your Aunt Gertrude would have liked him too."

“Noted. But he’s just my teammate, Mom,” Ryan tells her patiently, stooping to rest his chin on the top of her head. “Don’t worry. I’m sure I’ll settle down one day, just for you. The girl might even be a nice one.”

“Thank you,” she deadpans. “You’re very reassuring.”

“After retirement,” Ryan can’t help but add. But he counts it as a win when his mom lets out a startled laugh and squeezes him tighter.

\--

"Ha ha," Taylor says, later that evening, as he works at the buttons of Ryan's shirt in the safety of Ryan’s apartment. "I met your parents."

"So? Why is that funny?"

"Because isn't that what couples and shit do?” Taylor points out. “Gross.”

Ryan considers this, before making a mock-horrified face: "For fuck’s sakes, Hallsy: I need sex without feelings immediately! Quickly: an emotionless, no strings attached blowjob! Activate! Go!"

He's only half-serious, and Taylor's laughing, but he also abandons the buttons of Ryan's shirt in favour of getting down on his knees and turning his attention to undoing Ryan's pants - Ryan's definitely gotten less from doing more, so he's not going to complain, especially when Taylor’s doing that stupidly great thing with his tongue again.

Taylor has pretty comically bad timing though, because he chooses this moment, in the middle of a ridiculously good blowjob while Ryan’s edging towards orgasm, to pull off and consider Ryan thoughtfully.

Ryan makes a noise that sounds embarrassingly like a whimper. “Why did you stop?”

“Do you need to sleep with Nugent-Hopkins now?” Taylor asks him seriously. “For your bet, I mean. Because I don’t know if he’d be into this kind of thing, and I’m pretty sure he has a girlfriend. But I can introduce you if you want. So.”

Ryan just stares at him, incredulously. There’s a funny feeling in his chest; he hopes it’s a stroke.

“Fuck my life,” he mutters to himself, because the alternative to a stroke is probably _fondness_ , and just _fuck no_.

So instead, he puts a firm hand on the back of Taylor’s head and guides it back towards his crotch: “Hallsy, not gonna lie: I like you better when your mouth’s full.”

\--

"My mom _did_ ask if you were my boyfriend," Ryan concedes, afterward.

On the far side of the bed, Taylor rolls over so that he’s watching Ryan. He makes a face: "What did you say?"

"Of course I said no."

“Good,” Taylor says, unmistakably relieved; Ryan grins and can’t even remember why he was worried that this was all going to be a problem in the first place. “Even so, I like your mom,” Taylor continues sleepily. “She’s nice. Your dad and brothers, too.”

Ryan shrugs, crawling under the sheets beside him. “Yeah. They’re all right.”

There’s a long pause. And then, just when Ryan thinks that Taylor’s fallen asleep: “So, is this, like. A thing?” Taylor asks around a wide yawn.

Another moment passes as Ryan briefly mulls this over: “I dunno,” he admits. “Do you _want_ this to be a thing?”

Taylor shrugs lazily. “Do you?”

Ryan sighs. “…this could be a thing,” he says finally.

\--

It takes Ryan a long time to fall asleep that night, playing the conversation over and over in his head. Finally, Taylor just rolls over sleepily and drapes an arm around him. “You’re not in a fucking relationship. It’s just a thing, okay? Stop thinking so loudly and go to sleep,” he slurs against Ryan’s chest.

And so Ryan does.


	6. time stamp number one: 2016

**2016.**

The Blue Jackets have a late game, so when Taylor goes down on a borderline hit from Alexandre Burrows, Ryan doesn’t hear about it until after he grabs a beer and settles on the couch to watch Sportscentre reruns, the story wedged between basketball scores and NASCAR speculation. He'd seen the missed call in his history, but it had been a shitty-ass game and he hadn't really been in the mood to deal with the kid's bullshit after his own night. Then he sees Burrows crunch Taylor's head into the glass and nearly topples his beer diving for the phone, something suspiciously like guilt uncurling in his stomach.

" _Hey_ ," Ryan hears Taylor mumbling on voicemail. " _I know you're probably playing, but I just -- I guess I'm okay_ ," and at least he's as conscious and coherent as he ever is. There's a long, uncomfortable pause, and Ryan catches himself holding his breath. " _Well, no, I'm not really. I don't know. Uh._ " There's more to the message, Ryan hears it later, but he's currently too busy losing his goddamned mind to hear much of anything. Something about Taylor's resigned voice, quiet in a careful way he should never be, overrides Ryan's common sense and then he's booked a fucking red-eye with two stopovers and he's already halfway to the airport before he comes to.

Sometimes, Ryan wonders when the fuck his life turned horrible and what he ever did to deserve this.

In Calgary he calls the Blue Jackets management and fabricates some story about his Great-Aunt Gertrude's death - he'd feel bad since the funeral was actually years ago, but Aunt Gertrude would totally understand, wherever she is.

By the time he gets to Edmonton, he's tired and half-cut from airplane beer and grumpy as shit; he rides that feeling through the cab ride and piggybacks his way into Taylor's building by helping some old lady with her groceries. He has a moment of confusion when he realizes Taylor's been told that keeping a spare key above his door is a stupid idea, but fortunately he knows these idiots well enough to find it above Ebs and Lauren's door, one floor up.

It isn't until he's faced with Taylor, blinking confusedly at him from the couch, that he remembers one crucial part of his plan that he'd managed to forget.

"If you're a hallucination, I'm going to be really pissed," Taylor frowns, rubbing at his eyes. "Because I was hoping for like, some hot girl with a beer in each hand and one in her cleavage--"

"You're a goddamn idiot!" Ryan yells, he can't hold it in any longer. "How the fuck are you _skating with your head down_ with Burrows on the ice, you know that's practically asking for it, dumbass." Taylor's deflating with every word; _good_ , Ryan thinks viciously, he deserves some of what Ryan's been feeling for the last twelve hours.

"Whit, you're being really loud," he whines, and Ryan almost, _almost_ , feels sorry for him. "And my head hurts."

"You deserve it!" Ryan yells again, throwing his overnight bag on a kitchen chair. Maybe he should yell more, this is actually feeling pretty good. "Jesus fucking christ kid, if you weren't already losing much needed brain cells, I'd concuss you again mys--"

He's cut off by the door opening, as Ebs pokes his head in cautiously.

"Hey, Hallsy? It's kinda loud down here, and I saw your key's not--" he trails off awkwardly. Ryan's pretty sure he should be nervous by the way Ebs' face goes absolutely blank before a huge grin breaks out - "Hey, Whit! What are _you_ doing here?" he asks, way too cheerfully for Ryan's own good.

"He's yelling at me," Taylor mumbles dejectedly, either trying to hide under a throw pillow or smother himself with it. "Ebs, make him stop yelling."

"Ebs, go fuck yourself and mind your own business," Ryan adds, arms crossed. Ebs just nods, still grinning like a maniac, and starts backing out through the door again.

"Seems like everything's under control here," he nods. “Carry on gentleman.”

The door closes on Taylor’s plaintive whine, and Ryan’s gearing up to carry on, but his phone starts buzzing non-stop, and the detour to check it takes some of the wind out of his sails.

 _ **hope ur familys ok**_ from Rick Nash, and he doesn’t have time to feel bad about that before his phone buzzes again, and he has five texts from Tubes and seven from Lauren and seriously, fuck Ebs and his big mouth forever.

 ** _you think he’s pretty without any makeup on_** is the first text from Lauren; Ryan feels comfortable ignoring the next six to text her back: _**that song is five years old and you’re still getting the punchline wrong**_ before tossing his phone aside. On the other hand, it’s even harder to get his bitchy back on after that, and Taylor’s face punches the last of it out of him, hopeful yet confused.

“I’m stealing your beer,” Ryan mutters, grabbing two before he settles on the far end of the couch. Despite the clear boundary Ryan’s set between them, Taylor’s head is in his lap as soon as he sits down, nuzzling in.

“Okay. But only if you pet my hair.”

“I’m not petting your goddamn hair,” Ryan mutters. Taylor’s sad eyes prove him the worst sort of liar.

\--

Fortunately, Taylor’s dazed enough that Ryan can pass off his presence as normal - he’d be worried, but today has taken all of that out of him, between his near mental breakdown, the constant buzz of his phone, and Taylor’s quiet snuffles as he dozes intermittently while Ryan, for once, has control of the television remote. Unfortunately, there’s dick-all on TV in the middle of the afternoon on a Wednesday, and Taylor’s let his Netflix lapse, which means Ryan’s stuck watching Storage Wars and judging the fuck out of them, even though he has no high ground left to speak of.

Taylor’s finally dozing off properly when Ryan remembers with a sickening lurch: “Hey, are you allowed to sleep for real?”

“Dunno,” Taylor mumbles. “Probably?”

Cursing extravagantly, Ryan reaches for his phone and calls Ebs, because despite his great betrayal he’s still the person to go to for all things Taylor.

“Hey, Whit! Is the honeymoon over already?” he answers, cheerful enough that Ryan wants to punch him in the face.

“Go fuck yourself. Is he allowed to sleep?”

He can hear Ebs' smile all the way through the phone line and what is some remarkably shoddy construction in such an expensive building - or maybe that’s just Lauren’s heels banging excitedly on the floor. “Yeah, he can sleep. Just don’t let him go for too long.”

Taylor’s already passed out on his leg. Ryan mutters: “Sure, thanks,” before he settles in for a longer haul than usual. At least he had the foresight to grab an extra beer.

“Hey, don’t you have a game tomorrow?” Ebs asks.

“My Aunt Gertrude died, you fucker. Try and show some compassion.”

“Wasn’t she already--” and Ryan’s reminded that the kid’s always been the brains of the operation, although that’s really about as special as being the skinny kid at fat camp. He’d prefer not to deal with more of this shit, so he hangs up.

\--

He remembers too late that ignoring Teubert is like throwing down a gauntlet; when his phone blows up again a few hours later, waking them both, it’s to find out the asshole’s taken it to Twitter -

  


Ryan’s considering shoving someone’s head in an oven when his mother calls him; Taylor’s still dozing in his lap so he tries to replace his leg with a pillow as unobtrusively as possible before fleeing to the balcony to take it.

“Ryan,” and she doesn’t even wait for him to say hello: “Why am I getting all these flowers for your Aunt Gertrude?”

Forget the oven, Ryan thinks, there’s a nice long fall right in front of him.

“Something came up, I needed an excuse,” he mumbles, because no matter what, his mother can always make him feel about five inches tall.

“You _needed an excuse_?”

  “Aunt Gertrude would have understood,” he interrupts quickly, and waits for the penny to drop.

“This is about that boy of yours, isn’t it,” his mother sighs, while Ryan squirms uncomfortably. “Fine. You’re off the hook for now, but don’t think this is the end of it.”

“It’s never the end with you, Mom,” Ryan says because he’s still annoyed and vaguely suicidal, and holds the phone away from his ear while she “don’t you sass me Ryan Whitney”s and “I don’t know why you won’t settle down with someone nice, you’re not getting any younger”s and “I took you into this world, I can take you out”s. He has her routine down though, and he puts the phone back to his ear just as she’s winding down.

“I love you too, Mom. I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”

She hesitates, and he considers hanging up, but her voice is soft when she says: “Say hi to Taylor for me.”

He comes back into the apartment feeling even more unsettled than before.

\--

Despite his best efforts, Taylor’s awake, rubbing at his eyes. “What’s up?”

“Personal shit to deal with,” Ryan says with a shrug, and because Taylor’s even more allergic to talking about feelings than Ryan, he lets it go. “How’s the head?”

“Fine, I guess,” Taylor squints up at him hopefully. “Hey, did you see any ice cream in the freezer? Sometimes Ebs leaves me some when I’ve been having a bad day.”

“You’re not eating ice cream before dinner,” Ryan snaps, then realises far too late that he sounds like his mother. He rubs his forehead and sighs. “I can call out for something, if you want.”

“I want Wok Box,” Taylor says petulantly.

“We’re getting Oodle Noodle, you fucking philistine,” Ryan says, reaching for the phone. Taylor tries to argue, but since Ryan’s the one doing the ordering, he can just deal. While they wait, Taylor chugs both Gatorades that Ryan brings him, as he was apparently too lazy to get off his ass and grab a drink earlier, and Ryan makes the executive decision to switch to water.

It’s probably for the best, because that means when Taylor turns to him in the middle of dinner and says, “If you’re here for a booty call, you’re gonna be pretty disappointed, dude. I mean, I’m not exactly in any shape to keep up a boner,” he only has to deal with water up his nose, and not beer. “I guess I could probably blow you, though.”

“Um, you’d probably throw up all over my dick. That’s the least sexy thing I can think of, ever.” As far as Ryan’s concerned, that’s the end of it, but Taylor still looks like he’s thinking it through. “Shut up and eat.”

For once, Taylor listens.

Ebs did actually leave ice cream, banana split flavoured because they’re disgustingly married like that, and Ryan spoons out two bowls while Taylor graciously cleans up, by tossing their takeout containers into the garbage. The downside is even that little bit of movement has him sacked out on the couch again, shoveling ice cream into his mouth mechanically. It’s hard to believe that Ryan voluntarily has sex with that, sometimes.

The upside, though, is that Taylor’s too tired to complain when Ryan turns on the news.

Ryan tries not to look over, this day has been depressing enough, but when he does, Taylor has a bit of ice cream on his lip. Ryan rolls his eyes as he reaches out to brush it away, but for some reason his thumb stays there, resting gently, as Taylor glances up at him and for a sudden, horrifying second he feels every moment he’s had with this kid unraveling slowly between them and the sudden, yawning sense of panic jerks him, and his hand back.

“You had something,” he mutters, and digs viciously into his own bowl.

“You were thinking about blowjobs, weren’t you,” Taylor mumbles accusingly.

“Not in the slightest, kid,” Ryan says, horrified to realise Taylor's right. “You wish.” So does Ryan.

To placate himself, he decides it's best to turn his attention elsewhere for the time being, and responds to Teubert's stupid tweets instead:

  


\--

Because apparently when Ryan goes crazy, he goes balls-out, his plane will be leaving Edmonton ridiculously early in the morning. Between that and Taylor’s head, they’re in bed by ten, and the stress and beer and lack of sleep has Ryan falling asleep not long after that. Even though Taylor’s technically allowed to sleep, Ryan finds himself awake every few hours, just to make sure he's doing okay. This time, at ass-o-clock, Taylor is already awake for some reason, watching Ryan with this weird little smile.

“The fuck,” Ryan mumbles into his pillow. “What?”

Taylor smiles, almost to himself, and something uncurls warmly behind Ryan’s stomach. Maybe it’s indigestion. “Nothing,” Taylor says, reaching out to smooth a hand over Ryan’s shoulder, and he looks nineteen again, cocky and smug for no reason. “Go back to sleep, Whit.”

He does.

\--

(Two weeks later, he gets a text message from Taylor: _**sry 2 hear abt ur aunt. why were u in edm tho?**_ , and all he can do is rest his head on the table and laugh himself sick.)


	7. time stamp number two: 2021

**2021.**

Ryan’s almost pushing forty when he retires: he’s lucky – his feet have held up well enough since the trade; he’s never completely returned to form, but he tries, and sometimes that’s what counts most. It’s been a few good years, though: there was even a woman who he was briefly engaged to, a political science graduate student with a sense of road rage that rivalled his own – he’s not really sure what happened, maybe they both just got cold feet or something, but they’re still friends so that’s okay. The Oilers roll through Florida at least twice a year these days, and vice versa: Taylor always seems to be single every time they swing by – Ryan doesn’t ask questions and just goes with it because it’s still kind of fun after all this time.

The Panthers don’t make the playoffs and he doesn’t get a point in his last game, but the guys are sincere when they wish him well and take him out for drinks.

His retirement announcement comes out the next day: it's pretty anti-climactic. The day after that, he gets a delivery to his place, and it’s one of those super-fancy cakes: on top of it in perfect bakery-script, it says _congrats on retirement old man_. Ryan has to force himself not to smile even though no one else is around to see him. He takes a big bite of the cake without bothering to take it out of the box first.

It’s pretty good.

\--

He gives his two months’ notice to his landlord in Sunrise and moves back up to Boston that summer. He spends some time getting reacquainted with the city: he hangs out with his family; fixes up the apartment; goes to Red Sox games while keeping an eye on the Bruins and the Celtics on their respective playoff runs.

He briefly considers getting back into the dating game, but he’s not entirely sure how he would even go about doing that anymore. He toys around with internet dating a little bit, and his brothers offer to set him up with some of the divorcées they know from college. Ryan goes on a few of these dates: for the most part it's fun, but nothing serious comes of any of it.

In the end, he decides that serious dating’s probably a little too much work for him at this point in his life. But he’s not completely adverse to the idea of companionship, so he somehow finds himself at an animal shelter instead. He’s peering into the cages where the abandoned dogs are, and all of a sudden, there’s a wet nose pushing against his hand: she’s a sweet, goofy looking mutt - they say they’re not entirely sure what breeds she might be, or even how old she is, but that’s all taking a backseat to the fact that she’s basically giving Ryan’s hand a tongue-bath.

It’s ridiculous, and by all accounts, Ryan should be disgusted. But he’s not. And that’s how he knows that she’s the one, and that he’s going to take her home.

\--

Her name’s Kala, but she doesn’t respond when she gets called –

“Don’t like your name?” Ryan says to her, crouching down to speak to her at eye-level, glad that no one else is around to witness this. “How about…Missy? Ari?...Sidney?” He’s basically just throwing out names at this point; briefly, he considers naming his new friend Gertrude, but the cons probably outweigh the pros on that one. “Frank?”

Her ears perk up at the last one.

“Seriously?" Ryan says, staring incredulously at her. "You like _Frank_?”

She wags her tail.

Ryan shrugs, scratching behind her neck and watches the way she leans into it. “Okay, not judging. Frank it is.”

(Frank is big and stupid and a little too enthusiastic, but she’s loyal and she loves him, and that’s good enough for Ryan.)

\--

It’s mid-July when Taylor shows up unannounced at the door:

“I was in town,” he says hopefully. “Okay if I stay here for a few days?”

“Sure,” Ryan tells him, half-shrugging. “I mean, as long as it’s okay with my roommate.”

Taylor looks intrigued. “You have a roommate?”

“Yeah, she’s pretty badass,” Ryan says, and almost as soon as the words come out of his mouth, Frank comes skidding down the hallway to Ryan’s feet. She takes one look at Taylor and, tongue lolling out of her mouth, rolls on to her back and stretches out.

Laughing, Taylor drops his bag to kneel down and scratch the dog’s stomach: “Yeah, Whit - _totally_ badass.”

Ryan gives her a betrayed look, but she ignores him, too busy basking in the attention Taylor’s heaping on her, her limbs flailing in the air. “The traitor’s name is Frank,” Ryan offers.

“And Frank's a she?” Taylor asks, looking up at Ryan, grinning.

“Yeah,” Ryan affirms. “I don’t make the rules, man. I just go with it.”

\--

It’s the middle of the afternoon: Frank’s napping in a patch of sunshine in the kitchen, and Ryan and Taylor still haven’t left the bedroom they stumbled into shortly after Taylor’s arrival. Ryan’s not sure if there’s a formula for it or something because he didn’t think it was even possible, but Taylor’s blowjobs seem to get better and better every time they hook up.

(Then again, Taylor was always talented enough to be good at whatever he could be bothered to put his mind to - Ryan will give him that much.)

“You gonna set the guest room up for me?” Taylor smirks, like he can read Ryan’s mind.

“Man, shut up,” Ryan tells him, rolling over so that he doesn’t have to look at stupid Taylor’s stupid face.

“So um,” Taylor says without missing a beat. “The Oilers brass is looking for a new assistant.” No segue or anything. “Like, um. Front office guy. I didn’t say anything. ‘Cuz that might be weird. To them.”

Ryan’s really not even sure what he should say in response; feels almost completely blindsided. But he can feel Taylor watching him, waiting patiently for a response. So finally, he says, “I’ll think about it,” and closes his eyes.

\--

Ryan moves back up to Edmonton at the end of August. He drives up with four suitcases and Frank; leaves his furniture in Boston for Sean, who moves into the apartment with his wife and Ryan’s two nieces.

Almost everyone he used to know in Edmonton’s moved away or has gone for the summer, except Horc, who's working in hockey operations. He and his wife invite Ryan to crash at theirs until he can find his own place. When he finally does end up with a sweet new condo, they go furniture shopping with him, and eventually, it almost even feels like home in a way that Florida never did.

He starts working with the Oilers again about two weeks before the beginning training camp and finds that he doesn’t really mind the job much, even if it means that he doesn't get to nap as much as he'd like, or that he has to interact with bright-eyed rookies who were probably puttering around in diapers when he was drafted – he and Horc commiserate a lot.

\--

When players finally start trickling back into town, Horc tells him that he should have a housewarming party, so Ryan does: guys who are around in town show up - some guys he knew when he was in Anaheim, in Pittsburgh. Fucking Lupul and fucking Army, with their trophy wives. Bobby Fucking Ryan and his fiancé. Tubes can’t make it up from Dallas, but he does send a profanity-laden housewarming card covered in Nahla’s paw prints. Maxime Talbot shows up with a hot young hot blonde in tow.

(“You said ‘hot’ twice,” Ryan points out.

“I know,” Talbot replies shamelessly. “She’s _really_ hot.”

Ryan rolls his eyes, but supposes that he’s happy for him.)

Other familiar faces come over, too: Horc and his wife. Nuge and his wife. Ebs and Lauren. And Taylor.

“No girlfriend?” Ryan casually asks, coming to the kitchen for another beer, where Ebs, Nuge, and their better halves are laughing over something with Taylor. Frank scampers in excitedly at his heels, looking for a soft touch.

Taylor opens his mouth to respond, but Lauren beats him to it: “No, he does _not_ have a girlfriend,” she declares loudly and then waggles her eyebrows at Ryan.

And of course, of _course_ , Talbot overhears because he wanders in at that moment, looks from Ryan to Taylor: “Oh fuck me, _really_? I am definitely taking credit for all this. You’re _welcome_ , Whitter.”

“Uh, excuse me,” Lauren interrupts him. “ _I_ was the one who wanted to set them up in the first place.”

Ryan’s eyes widen in alarm at the on-coming shitstorm. “Wait, what –”

“—hey. Hey!” Ebs jumps in. He pauses, before a huge grin spreads over his face. “If _anyone_ gets credit for this, it should be _me_.”

Taylor sighs loudly. “Fuck all of you. I’m taking Frank out for a walk,” he announces. “Come on, girl,” he calls her over and grabs the leash before leading the excitable dog out the door, pointedly not making eye contact with any of them.

All eyes turn to Ryan. “Of _course_ he knows your dog,” Ebs says, the same time Nuge grins slyly, all, “You know he hasn’t been seeing any girls since you got back to Edmonton,” while Talbot raises an eyebrow and goes, “You named your _girl_ dog Frank?” all incredulously, like _that’s_ the most pressing issue here.

“You’re all assholes,” Ryan mumbles, popping open his can of beer and taking a long swallow.

\--

The season’s going all right: Ryan goes to the home games and watches a ton of away games with some of the front office folks that he even ends up befriending. It’s good; comfortable.

Taylor comes over to his place often: sometimes they have sex, sometimes they don’t. It’s sort of the same as it always was, but kind of different – ever since Jordan moved out of his shared apartment with Taylor to move in with his wife years before, Taylor’s become a vaguely more competent human being who can sort of cook and mostly do laundry. Sometimes, he does Ryan’s laundry for him, mixing it in with his own stuff. Sometimes Ryan finds Taylor’s jackets hung up next to his own; Ryan’s had to clear out an entire drawer for clothes that Taylor accidentally leaves at his place.

(“I’ll grab them later,” Taylor tells him. Then he’ll leave on a road trip and forget about taking them out until he needs a clean shirt to wear; Ryan doesn’t bother reminding him about it because it’s kind of funny.)

For the most part, that kind of stuff is actually sort of nice – it’s not so bad having someone else around; Frank seems to enjoy it, at least. Like when Ryan goes into his own bedroom and finds her pre-game napping with Taylor in Ryan’s bed.

(Ryan sort of has to wander away and find something else to do, before he does something stupid, like join them.)

\--

When Christmas rolls around, the entire organization has a party that’s open bar and ridiculous enough to have Nuge dressed up as Santa, beard and all.

Ryan’s been drinking, which is what he blames his total lack of self-preservation on when Nuge – with strength Ryan never even knew he had – shoves him and Taylor under the mistletoe that’s hanging in the corner. “Oops,” Nuge says, not sounding terribly apologetic. “Ho, ho, ho.”

Smirking, Taylor tugs at Ryan, and angles for what Ryan thinks will be a chaste kiss, but turns into a sloppy, wet make-out session in front of the entire organization. Ryan’s not going to complain: he’s probably drunker than he thought he was, and the stupid kid’s just as good of a kisser as he always has been.

“Oh god,” Ryan hears one of the rookies lamenting in the background. “Old drunk dudes making out.”

And then, the unmistakable sound of hysterical Eberle-laughter: “Trust me; they were just as gross when Hallsy was eighteen. Probably even worse ‘cuz I was living with him.”

Ryan pulls away first, but he can tell that Taylor’s also laughing. “Nineteen, you fucker!” Ryan yells at Ebs.

Ebs just flips Ryan off and thumps Taylor heartily on the back with his other hand, still grinning manically – “Show the captain some respect when you’re defiling my assistant!”

\--

Ryan spends the rest of the party sort of avoiding Taylor, since on one hand, Ryan feels like they may have over-stepped one of the unspoken rules they set all those years ago; though on the other hand, Ryan’s pretty drunk and kind of turned on and figures that while Taylor might be, too, a blowjob in the bathroom of the hotel where they’re having a work function might not be the greatest idea in the world.

At the end of the evening, Taylor sidles up to Ryan, places a hand on his elbow: “Need a ride home?”

The thing is, Ryan probably should grab a cab home instead but he’s curious, and the truth is he’s never been very smart when it comes to Taylor anyway. “You drove? You’ve been drinking.”

“Nah,” Taylor shrugs. “Took some painkillers earlier; can’t drink on them.”

Ryan blinks at him. “You’re not drunk.”

“No,” Taylor patiently agrees, tugging Ryan in the direction of his ride and toward the passenger side. “I’m not.”

After that, the drive back to Ryan’s is kind of awkward and silent – Taylor tries to mask the quiet by turning on the radio and flipping through the channels at a dizzying speed, trying to find something listenable: it’s kind of annoying, actually, but Ryan appreciates the effort.

Ryan doesn’t say anything at all, until they pull up into the parking lot of his condo, when he can’t contain himself anymore - “God, you’re so _stupid_ : what’s your team going to say tomorrow?”

“Half the team thought I was drunk and the other half probably still thinks that I’m banging Ebs and Lauren’s his beard,” Taylor tells him. “Anyway, I don’t care.” And in this moment, with absolute certainty, Ryan knows that he means it.

Ryan stares at him for a long time before relenting with a sigh, suddenly incredibly _tired_. “Are you coming in or not?”

The corner of Taylor’s mouth quirks into a half-smile; he parks the car, cuts off the engine and follows Ryan in.

Taylor veers off toward the kitchen while Ryan makes his way to the bedroom, and he's already in bed by the time Taylor reappears with a bottle of water and some Tylenol that he sets down on the bedside table next to Ryan - “You’re probably going to need those tomorrow morning,” Taylor tells him, getting under the covers as well and moving in close enough that Ryan thinks he can feel Taylor’s grin pressed against his shoulder.

And there are so many things Ryan wants to say right now, like _are you okay?_ and _what are you doing this for?_ and _why did you kiss me at the party?_ , but he's too drunk and too tired to arrange any of these words into proper sentences. What comes out instead is: “Hallsy, you’re going to make a great wife for some poor bastard one day."

“Man, shut up,” Taylor tells him, with something that sounds an awful lot like affection in his voice as he spoons up against him, not even trying to cop a feel.

And maybe, Ryan thinks, maybe it's because he's drank way too much tonight, but he's kind of all right with this, too.

\--

More often than not these days, Ryan notices that Taylor’s become a constant presence in his life. Taylor’s favourite game day ties get mixed in with his own. There is an increasing lack of organization in Ryan’s dresser, his shirts and Taylor’s shirts folded into the same drawers. And Ryan finds that he’s been buying a hell of a lot more groceries - more KD than any grown man should ever have in his pantry at one time, and orange juice with pulp, and both kinds of peanut butter, smooth and crunchy.

Ryan fucking _hates_ crunchy peanut butter.

He picks up a couple more things, like diet dog food and six different types of cereal and two different kinds of bread and a can of Alphaghetti because it's funny, before wandering down a few more aisles and pausing in the middle of the supermarket's pharmacy. Ryan tosses a couple ice packs into the cart; he tells himself that it's because old habits die hard, and not because Taylor keeps leaving them all around Ryan's apartment and then makes tragic faces when he can't find a cold one in the freezer.

Ryan's still contemplating the shelves when the phone in his pocket vibrates; he takes a peek at the caller ID before answering - it's Taylor: "What?"

"Hey. Next time you’re at the store, buy some dog food – you’re almost out. The diet kind, though," Taylor says. "Frank's getting kind of fat."

"Fuck you, _you're_ getting fat," Ryan tells him automatically, and pointedly does not mention the large bag of diet kibble already in the shopping cart.

Taylor just laughs: "Shut it, old man." Ryan can hear him letting himself in through a door to excited barking in the background, and the muffled sounds of Taylor greeting the dog. And then, clearly: "So, I'm at your place. Gonna take your dog out for a bit, okay?"

Ryan makes an indistinct noise of acknowledgement, mostly distracted. "Question for you," he says instead, tilting his head to peer at the selection on the shelf in front of him.

"What's up?"

"Condoms," Ryan says.

There's a pause on the other end of the phone. "What about them?" Taylor asks, somewhat cautiously.

"Do I need to buy them?" Ryan leans closer to examine the rows of boxes. "I'm not the one making millions here, you know."

"Uh," Taylor says. "Did you want me to go pick them up?"

Ryan takes a deep breath, unsure of how to articulate this properly. "No, I mean, do we _need_ to buy them?"

There's another brief silence on the line, like Taylor's actually running through a mental inventory. He probably is. "Well, I think you're out at your place. So..." he trails off.

"Okay," Ryan says. He knows it's unfair to expect Taylor to be able to read his mind, to know what he's trying to say without being able to say it. But he still can't help the vague sense of disappointment settling somewhere deep inside himself.

There's a long pause, long enough that Ryan thinks that Taylor may have hung up. But then, Taylor says, "...is there a reason you need to be using them?"

Interesting. "Any reason for _you_ to be using them?" Ryan deflects instead, trying not to sound too hopeful. Because maybe, just maybe--

"Well," Taylor tells him with just the briefest moment of hesitation. "Not really, no."

"Yeah, me neither," Ryan confesses.

"Yeah?" Taylor says, kind of expectantly.

Ryan just kind of makes a strangled noise. "...so I'm just going to...not--"

"--Just so we're clear," Taylor interrupts him. "You're not buying condoms because _I_ haven't been sleeping with anyone else in a while, and _you_ haven't been sleeping with anyone else either, right? And not because _we're_ not sleeping together anymore, right? 'Cuz that would be kind of shitty."

Ryan opens his mouth, but nothing comes out as he realizes that somehow, for the first time in years, Taylor has managed to stun him into silence. Finally, Ryan recovers enough to choke out, "Yeah Hallsy. Exactly."

"Cool," Taylor says, sounding pretty unfazed. "That's what I thought anyway."

It takes Ryan a moment longer to realize exactly what's going on here; that they're on exactly the same page. He straightens up with this confidence, and after a moment he says, "So we don't need condoms. Great. Are we still going to need lube?"

Ryan cackles as, this time, Taylor definitely hangs up on him.

\--

It’s only 9 p.m. on a Thursday in February, and Ryan’s already sacked out on the couch with Frank curled up and snoring at his feet. On TV, the Blackhawks are playing the Kings; the Oilers have a week-long homestand and aren't playing again until tomorrow night, so he's got Taylor beside him, dozing against his shoulder.

It's now or never, he guesses: if he doesn't ask now, maybe he never will.

So he nudges gently at Taylor. “Hallsy. _Taylor_. Taylor, wake up.”

Taylor makes an incomprehensible noise; not completely awake, but awake enough to have this conversation probably.

“So, when are you planning to sell your place?” Ryan asks, hoping that he sounds casual.

“What?” Taylor opens his eyes just wide enough to peer sleepily up at Ryan.

Ryan sighs. “Sell your place, Hallsy,” he repeats more slowly, gently, letting the meaning of his words sink in.

“Oh,” Taylor says, and then shifts a little so that his face is kind of mashed up against Ryan’s chest, more than half-asleep again already. “Yeah. Okay.”

\--

So this: this is Ryan’s life now - hockey on TV; a snoring dog at his feet; a warm, solid, comfortable weight against his side. And Ryan smiles, because he can probably get used to this.

 

**end.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are a couple outtakes from the story as well, avaliable on LJ - [the first one](http://s0ckahtoa.livejournal.com/3788.html) is set after the first time stamp, starring Colten and Nahla Teubert; [the second one](http://s0ckahtoa.livejournal.com/3546.html) is an optional epilogue set after the second time stamp.
> 
> Thank you so much for taking the time to read the story! :)


End file.
